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SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 



ODDS AND ENDS OF ANECDOTE AND 
EARLY DOINGS, 



Gathered from Maxuscripts, Pamphlets, axd 
Aged Residents. 



By mason a. green. 




SPRINGFIELD, MASS.: 

WHITNEY & ADAMS. 

1876. 

'7r 



Kntorod !U'i'on.llns; to Act of Ooi\sross, In tl\o yo«r l!<7(>, by 

MASON A. UKEKX, 
In th« Office of tlie Ltbrarlaii of Congress, ut WaslilngtoD. 



Olirk \V. Urt vn s Co., 
Si'KiNOFiK\ i>, Mass. 



'^ ebicaieb 



SAMUEL BOWLES, 

For whose Journal these Sketches were originally 
prepared. 



INDEX. 



CHAPTER. 

I. Spkixgfield Village IX 177(3, 

II. Old Time Bric-a-brac, 

III. Flip Days i.v Sprixgfield, . 

IV. Sprii^gfieli) Trade Half a Cextury Ago, 
V. The Old Mechaxics' AssociATiox, 

VI. Migration of the Frogs, 

VII. Court Square axd the Elm 

VIII. Early Sights axd Scexes, 

IX. The Breck Controversy, 

X. Fashions and Things, 



s, 



PAGE. 

. 9 
. 26 
39 
42 
51 
59 
62 
68 
82 
96 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 



CHAPTER I. 

SPEINGFIELD VILLAGE IN 1776. 

The visitor to the village of Springfield, in 1776, 
standing at the corner of Main street and Ferry lane 
(Cypress street) — at that time the business center — 
would have in view, down the west side of the street, 
most of its one hundred and seventy-five houses, and 
the solitary church spire, with pasture land running 
back to the river. On the east side were a mountain 
brook, a narrow strip of wet grass land, (" hasseky 
marish ") — as often a pond as a meadow — and an elm 
and oak-fringed forest of pine, rising into a broad 
plateau. To the right, on the narrow vista of river, 
could be seen the ferryman's flat scow, '' set over with 
poles," either bringing grain and hay from West 
Springfield, or taking back groceries. Up and down 
the street walked the old merchants in knee-breeches, 
and the younger and gayer in scarlet coats, with per- 
chance a passing slave, or wigged magistrate, or plain 



10 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

housewife carrying water from the brook across the 
way. With a httle kick, too, one might have heard 
the sound of rifle up on the plain, (Armory Hill), 
where a venturous deer had browsed, or even an occa- 
sional stage-horn from the " Bay Path," before the 
coach entered from Boston over the marsh by a nar- 
row corduroy causeway, (State street). In her then 
one hundred and thirty years of history, the village 
had grown but little, and her territory, as she entered 
the Revolution, had been greatly reduced. Her 
children plantations of West Springfield, Southwick, 
Westfield, Suffield, Enfield and Somers, had, one by 
one, set up for themselves, though Springfield still 
cherished Longmeadow and Chicopee Falls, and sus- 
tained her claim of being the hub of all Western 
Massachusetts. 

Strolling down toward the big elm, the most prom- 
inent and uninviting building in architecture and loca- 
tion was the Court-house, built fifty-five years before. 
It stood, square and ill-mannerly, out into the road, 
(at the head of Sanford street), over, or perhaps be- 
yond the brook, and in front of it was a whipping- 
post. Executions used to be in public, and on gal- 
lows almost as high as Haman's, so that it could be seen 
at a great distance. The whipping-post was also al- 
ways prominently situated ; and from the external 
rigidity of Puritans, a traveling Voltaire might call 
the whipping-post a very good statue in wood of New 
England's god. A little to the south, in front of 



SrmXGFIELD MEMORIES. 11 

H. & J. Brewer's drug store, was an elm, used also for 
a whipping-post. The late Daniel Lombard used to tell 
how he pitied the unfortunates whom he saw stripped, 
and publicly flogged there. Back of tlie present old 
Town hall on State street, was a new brick school-house, 
costino; £117. Across tlie wav, eio-hteen feet north 
of the large elm on the Common, rose the famous 
tavern of Zenas Parsons, which had a fearfully high 
wing on Main street (when afterward detached dubbed 
the "Light house,") and barns and sheds along Meet- 
ing-house lane, (Ehn street). Beyond the sheds, stand- 
ing partly on Ehn street, and partly on the south-west 
corner of the present Court Square, stood the church, 
holding on the finger of its steeple the same golden 
rooster that to-day wags his thin tail in all weathers. 
The ground back to the river was open pasture and 
meadow land. There was a pair of bars across Meet- 
ing-house lane by the church, and, at a later day, and 
presumedly at this time, passers leaving the bars 
down were fined. This lane led through the burying- 
ground and adjoining training field to the middle 
landing. It wasn't an accident that the latter field 
was so near the grave-stones. Training was a sacred 
duty, always opened with prayer, and continued to 
the beat of the same drum that called them to Sab- 
bath service. Along the river bank was a path pro- 
tected by a town law, each fence having a gate with 
a post set in the middle, to check the cattle. 

The church, at this time some tAventy-five years 



12 SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

old, was sixty feet by forty-six, with a tower on the 
lane, but the main entrance toward the east. The 
seats were square and the pnlpit high, extending over 
the deacon seats, wdiich faced the congregation. 
Above w^as a ponderous sounding-board, and nervous 
people used to fear, during sermon time, that it would 
fall into the pulpit, and that on to the deacons below. 
The old box pews and high pulpits have their origin 
in the English churches, which have pulpits of 
such altitudes as to tax the neck, even, of a high 
churchman, to look at them. The deacon's hat is 
spoken of by old people as a peculiar insignia of 
office, which, with his powdered hair, made him look 
venerable enough. The broad galleries held as many 
as the body seats, and in a back and high corner, 
nearest the shingles, the colored people took their 
religion, which may suggest the origin of our " nigger 
heaven." The deacons, at this time, w^ere Nathaniel 
Brewer, son of the former minister, and, as a carpen- 
ter, often employed in church repairs, Daniel Harris, 
and probably Moses Bliss, who certainly was four 
years later. Judge Bliss was not less distinguished 
for his sterling parts and godliness, than for his eccen- 
tricities. He wore a powdered wig, knee-breeches, 
low shoes and shining buckles. They say that he 
first heard of the Declaration of Independence as he 
touched the wharf from West Springfield with a load 
of hay ; and, not being able to elevate his continental 
heels and cocked hat high enough, he at once set fire 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 13 

to the hay, amid the imhmited enthusiasm of every- 
body. This sort of originahty ran in the family, and 
probably from his fjither, Jedidiah, they were called 
" Jedites," and to be odd or " singularly gaited," was 
to be " jeddy." But individuality was in the line of 
local things. The elder Pjnichon had come to the 
Connecticut, one hundred and thirty years before, 
where he could get beaver skins and have his religion 
free. Of skins there were plenty ; Ijut they burned 
his book on Boston Common, and he was " jeddy " 
enough to return to England. John Hitchcock, of the 
Wilbraham church, was a strongly individualized dea- 
con. He was, physically, the most remarkable man 
of his time, and his churchly decorum did not prevent 
him, on one occasion, from running a race with a 
horse, ten miles into the village, and getting there 
first! But Hampden Park was not. Horses have 
since gone up, and deacons down ; and there probably 
now is not a deacon in Western Massachusetts who 
can beat the time made at the fall races. Twenty- 
five 3'ears before, the Chinese w^all through the con- 
gregation, dividing males and females, was broken 
down, but it took all the w^isdom the selectmen and 
deacons could command to assign the seats, " either 
higher or lower as they should judge most meete." 
The meeting-house was not warmed, in those days, 
and the preacher often pointed to the ceiling with his 
big, worsted mitten, while the women used foot- 
stoves, and everybody else knocked heel against heel. 



14 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

Entering Main street again, a little north of Zenas 
Parsons', was another tavern, where Tinkham's store 
now is, kept by Moses Church. He was afterward, if 
not at this time, postmaster, his office being across the 
way, back of the brook, and on the border of the 
meadow. Deacon Daniel Harris' honse came next, 
with a lot, like all his neighbors, extending to the 
river; and next Daniel Lombard, on the south corner 
of Pynchon and Main streets ; then the deputy sher- 
iff, William Pynchon, Jr., where the Haynes House 
now is, and his brother, John, father-in-law of the 
late Henry Brewer, across the way, which was the last 
building on that side for over a mile, or to Carew 
street. Eev. Robert Breck occupied the parsonage, 
the site of Fallon's block. He was then in the forty- 
first year of his ministry, which, beginning in an ec- 
clesiastical war over his orthodox}^, ripened through 
a long period of peace in the church and noise of war 
without. Beyond the Parsons property, (the Justin 
Lombard site,) was the Worthington tavern, near the 
north corner of Bridge and Main. Lieutenant Wor- 
thington had died, two years before, and his son, who 
is known as the Hon. John Worthington, had suc- 
ceeded to the estate, and become one of the old 
" River Gods." Among his many distinctions is that 
of being the first Springfielder who carried an um- 
brella, for the sun, however, instead of the rain. 
He didn't burn many tons of hay out of love for the 
rebels. He was, indeed, called a rank tory, and his en- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 15 

ergetic gymnastics toward Philadelphia about this 
time, gave color to the charge. But the village, in the 
end, came to love him in spite of his haughty bearing, 
and he did good service as a member of the govern- 
or's council, and at other posts of duty. The colonel 
closed the tavern, but it was opened again during the 
war of 1812 ; and at the news of the peace, EHjah 
Goodrich, who then kept it, treated a procession of 
citizens to toddy, dealing it out in pails. When the 
western road was opened, Charles Stearns moved it 
back to the corner of Worthino-ton and Water streets, 
where he had an old-fashioned house-warming, with 
peat burning in the grates. The Pynchon family 
owned from a point near the Worthington tavern, to 
Ferry lane (Cypress street). Edward, the register of 
deeds, who died the following year, probably lived in 
the old fortified brick house, on the site of Fort block, 
which has been much written about, — one of the three 
that sheltered the women and children and few men, 
when King Philip's warriors burned the town, one hun- 
dred years before. George Pynchon was near by, on 
the Goodrich block site, and Doctor Charles Pynchon 
was on the corner of Main street and Ferry lane. The 
latter's block contained an apothecary's store, 
Sweeney's tailor, and other shops, and was in the bus- 
iness center. On the other corner was Zebina Steb- 
bins' establishment. He was a person of considerable 
enterprise and note, his name often appearing in the 
old records, and is deserving of our gratitude for his 



X 



16 SPRIIS^GFIELD MEMORIES. 

share, in company with Festus and Joseph Stebbins, 
in the planting and watering of the ehns in the cen- 
ter of North Main street. Nathaniel Brewer lived on 
the river bank, at the foot of the lane. He was a 
prominent man, and, as chairman of the town com- 
mittee of correspondence, gave Colonel Worthington 
a certificate of good character against the charge of 
toryism. Continuing in the line of this attenuated 
town was the Hitchcock house, (Emery street), Jo- 
seph Stebbins, (Clinton and Main), Moses and Captain 
Thomas Stebbins, and, finally. Major Joseph Stebbins' 
new tavern, (Carew street,) which had in front of it 
a large round ball for a sign. During the Revolution, 
a pay-master placed a large sum of continental money 
with the major, but never returned to claim it, and it 
was kept untouched until worthless from deprecia- 
tion. Captain Thomas Stebbins had just started a 
pottery opposite his premises, on the east side of the 
street, bringing his clay from Long Hill. 

Returning again to the " Causeway," (State street,) 
we find J. & J. Dwight keeping store in a smallish red 
house, fitted up for the purpose, on the corner where 
is now the Savings Bank building. During the war 
this became the largest store in this part of the State. 
One of the "J.s" is Jonathan. He had come to 
Springfield in 1 753, and was emphatically an old-time 
gentleman. Doctor Albert Booth says of him : " He 
was a great smoker, lighting his pipe in summer with 
a burning-glass, and described by many who remem- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 17 

ber him, as often crossing the street in such a cloud 
of smoke, as to be nearly invisible. He was almost 
the last representative of the silk-stocking, short- 
breeches, and silver shoe-buckle gentry, — rather scant 
clothing, the boys thought, who knew of his practice 
of going out to fodder the cows before daylight or 
breakfast, cold winter mornings, with stockings down 
about his heels, and rubbing his legs when he came 
in, to get up a circulation, as he said." As the fash- 
ions changed to pantaloons, there was much discussion 
as to whether they were as durable as knee-breeches. 
New England always debates the utility of things, 
and knee-breeches did not escape the trial. The 
stockings were thick, and wore for a long time, espe- 
cially the silk ones. It was strenuously maintained 
by the older people that pantaloons were a great deal 
more costly than small-clothes. Mr. Dwight was a 
slave-holder to the extent of one African, and lived 
across the way, where Whitney «fe Adams now are, in 
one of the very few painted houses of the village. 

At an early day, a causeway of logs had been built 
across the marsh, now State street, and w^as sustained 
by toll. The road was narrow at the causeway, be- 
came wider on the meadow, and was laid out twenty 
rods wide on the hill. Passing the old Dwight home- 
stead, on the west corner of State and Maple streets, 
and seven or eight houses further up, it ran through 
the woods to the " Bay Path," (corner of State and Wal- 
nut streets), where Joseph Wait, of Brookfield, had 



18 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

put up a large red sandstone guide-post, thirteen years 
before. This, as now can be seen, he did after a nar- 
row escape from death in taking the Skipmuck, in- 
stead of the Boston road, during a storm. Armory 
Hill was a pine plain, with an occasional patch of oak 
undergrowth, and nearer the " hasseky marish," back 
of the library building, stood a fine oak grove, with 
sentinel elms on the outskirts, among silver and white 
poplars and willows. The many and clear springs kept 
the marsh from stagnation, and gave all the fertility 
and warmth, without the miasma of the lowlands. 
Opposite the Dwight store, (Webber's corner), was 
the house of Luke Bliss, a man of fine presence and 
courtly manners, a representative at the General 
Court, and leader of the village choir. He and his 
brother owned most of the land between the present 
Watershops and the Armory. On the corner of 
Meeting-house lane and Main street, was a wooden 
store and dwelling-house owned by Moses Bliss, a 
shoemaker. The property came into the hands of the 
Lombard family eleven years later. Below Jonathan 
Dwight's house w^as a dwelling, where Homer Foot & 
Co. now are, which, in 1800, became Bates' tavern. 
Then came the Collins homestead, the Moses Bliss 
place, and the " old gaol " tavern, partly on the Union 
House site, the log " gaol " being in the rear. This 
gloomy, colonial lock-up was furnished with heavy 
shackles and stocks, and clumsy padlocks. Below this 
(north corner of Howard and Main streets), was the 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 19 

old Josiah D wight house, (he was the other and the 
older "J" in the Dwight firm), and, across the way, 
(the D. A. Bush place), his distillery, and a building put 
up for a store. Scattered along on the river side 
were the houses of Ely, Warner, (Mrs. P. F. Wilcox's), 
Jedidiah Bliss, father of Moses, (south of William 
street), Joseph Ferre, — the man who once said, prob- 
ably in town meeting, " John Worthington rules this 
town with a rod of iron," — Loring, Burt, Caleb Ferre 
and Cooley, (L. H. Taylor's), with the Sikesand Reu-^ 
ben Bliss places on the other side. 

Twenty-iive years earlier, there were but seven 
houses on State street and four on Maple, and there 
is no evidence that it had changed much before 1776. 
The elm on Elijah Blake's place is known to be ninety 
years old, and was planted after a house had been 
built there by one Stebbins. It is not hazardous to 
say that this and a house on each side, which were as 
old, were standing in 1776, and further up on the 
other side, were three or four small houses of about 
the same age, which will account for the buildings on 
the " Causeway." Maple street, in the early papers 
called " the road to Charles Brewer's," had been put 
through to the foot of " Thompson's Dingle," (now 
the cemetery). A house of correction on this road 
was burned, one hundred years before. Of the four 
houses standing here in 1776, were those of Charles 
Brewer, near Mr. Rumrill's residence, which was a 
large house, commanding a good view of the long 



20 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

town street that slept on the river bank ; and two 
small houses near by (Lombard Dale's), occupied by 
Sol Ferre and his sisters, Lizzie and Martha. The 
street stopped short a little beyond Brewer's, but was 
continued, in a well-trodden footpath, down to the 
Dwlght distillery on South Main street. The street 
ran to the west of the present line and of these 
houses alons^ the brow of the hill. When the road 
was straightened, the out-buildings were compli- 
mented with a position in the front yard. Misses Liz- 
zie and Martha, at the beginning of the century, were 
white-haired women, and were the terror of the third 
and fourth generation thereabouts ; for, over the brow 
of the hill, the sweet flag and mint grew in abund- 
ance, and, waiting till the maids, who carefully 
watched the place, were away, they Avould gather the 
flag ; but it often happened, to then grief, that the 
owners would put in a sudden appearance. 

In 1776, the population of the village was prob- 
ably 1,200. 

It was used during the Revolution as a center of 
supplies, for which the first government buildings 
were put up on the Hill, naturally giving the place 
an impetus, though as late as 1791 it numbered but 
1,574. The town brook, by the by, had its own 
way in those days. In the first place, it performed 
the curious feat of splitting itself right in two, and 
running both north and south, and then, in times 
of rain, it would try to shove itself all down either 





SpriucfieldViuac^ 
ijj6 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 23 

the one or the other of these channels ; or, per- 
haps, it would fill up the marsh so that a boat 
could be rowed from the Causeway to Stebbins' new 
tavern, (Carew street). But it always had under its 
banks the finest trout to be found for many a mile. 
Even in this century, lazy anglers have fished from 
shop windows, through the grating of plank and logs 
across it, and with good luck. But these were untu- 
tored times, and it is now doing good in the world by 
cleaning sewers. There exists, so far as is known, no 
map of Springfield in 1776. The accompan^'ing plan 
of the village locates the important buildings as indi- 
cated by manuscript and tradition ; and, if there be 
added a reasonable number of out-buildings, and such 
minor houses as must have escaped record, a good idea 
of old Springfield can be obtained. 

As to dress, a century ago, there was much color, 
especially on the male side. We have records of 
brown velvet and Avhite jackets, snuff-colored, light 
blue worsted and scarlet coats, and buckskin breeches. 
A Springfield slave, who lived a few years later, is de- 
scribed as having a blue coat with white metal but- 
tons. In fact, our ordinary country gentleman spent 
more money in dress than his lady, who could get a 
grand bonnet for six shillings, while he paid one 
pound for his hat. Savages had already become so 
scarce, that when a company of Stockbridge Indians 
passed through Springfield for Roxbury, at the com- 
mencement of the war, they were counted a curios- 



24 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

ity. It was still the day of fire-places, though one or 
two families may have enjoyed the luxury of the 
new-fangled hox stove, weighing seven hundred 
pounds, with a fire under the oven, and a boiler-hole 
in the oven bottom. The plow of one hundred years 
ago was not aesthetically remarkable. It is known as 
the " bull plow," and was ordinarily made of wood, 
except the 'wrought iron share. The standard was 
vertical, and attached to it was the sole piece and 
beam. The clevis hung on the nose of the beam, 
which extended forward, and rested on a two-wheeled 
cart drawn by animals. The wooden mould-board 
was sometimes plated with sheet-iron or strips of 
hammered horse-shoes. 

Springfield was never blind to progressive ideas. 
There were already in this community of 1,200 souls, 
— hardly a tolerable crowd for the City Hall, — five 
taverns, and, besides, there had been one execution 
six years before. The familiar picture of a solemn 
New England Sabbath, begun in the morning by the 
rooster's " crowing psalm tunes," and ending at sun- 
down, when the children played blind-man's-buff in 
the streets, and young men drank flip at the taverns, 
is as true of Springfield as of Northampton. The 
dignified progress of the judiciary, which met alter- 
nately here and at Northampton, was enough to melt 
the most incorrigible malefactor. The judges ap- 
proached the Court-house, preceded by the high sher- 
iff, bearing a long rod ; and, while the Court-house 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 25 

bell rang out its homage, the line of cocked hats and 
long queues moved with dignity to the bench. 

But the troubles with England had reached a crisis, 
and, in 1776, men took off the ruffles about their 
wrists and sold them for powder, Springfield as heart- 
ily as all New England. 



CHAPTER 11. 

OLD TIME BEIC-A-BRAC. 

Springfield village had its crop of strong, noble 
men, who could legislate or hold the plow, with equal 
excellence. And perhaps no two of them had more 
of the homespun virtues and culture of the age, and 
less of mutual characteristic, than old John Worth- 
ington and Parson Howard. One w\as a tory by na- 
ture, conservative, courtly and stern, to the last de- 
gree, yet with too much character not to yield when 
in the wrong, as was shown by his conversion to Re- 
publicanism. The other was a born liberalist, san- 
guine, progressive and undiplomatic. He once called 
a dear friend and prominent citizen a liar in a debate 
on slavery, and the fellow wasn't certain but the par- 
son was right, and swallowed it. Howard was per- 
sonally winning, and did not have that attending halo 
of touch-me-not, that marked Colonel Worthington. 

The latter was never anybody's grandfather to 
speak of. Children held their breath when he spoke, 
and the irreverent called him " don." He made he- 
roic efforts to impress his name and character on a 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 27 

male heir ; but he merely contributed three little 
tombstones to three infant " John Worthingtons." It 
was the other side of the house that was to hand 
down the high breeding of his family. This breeding 
took a peculiar form, sometimes. He once snatched 
a Butler's Analogy from the hands of a daughter 
whom he caught reading and sweeping the room at 
the same time, and said : " This is not a book for a 
girl to read." To be sure, she was only twenty-four ! 
He allowed no bed in the house to be made imtil after 
dark on Sundays. Abler men than he have lost the 
use of the hair on their heads, for interfering with 
such matters. There was a secret closet in his house, 
— not an imcommon thing in those days, — but he put 
it to the uncommon use of concealing tories. It be- 
came a noted retreat for refugees, the father of the 
late Henry Sterns being among those who have hid in 
this historic cubby-hole. While the afterward distin- 
guished Fisher Ames was paying attention to the 
Colonel's daughter, Frances, it Avas his misfortune 
once to be asked to carve a turkey. The embryo 
congressman hadn't the sangfroid or skill to place the 
fork over the breast-bone, and, without removing it, 
to uncover all from white meat to bishop's nose. He 
squeezed, and sliced, and twisted the bird into such 
forbidding ligaments, right before his girl's family, 
that he vowed to himself the " don " would never 
give him a chance to carve for a family of his own. 
In deep chagrin he posted to Boston, took carving les- 



28 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

sons, and, on his return, found a goose in the platter, 
which he served most beautifully. "Mr. Ames," ob- 
served the " don," " you find a tough goose easier to 
carve than a tender turkey." Ames won his suit. 
When John and Samuel Adams passed through the 
village on their way to the Continental Congress, 
Colonel Worthington asked in a loud voice, " Adamses, 
where are you going ? " "To Philadelphia, to declare 
these colonies free." "Gentlemen, beware!" was 
the answer. " Look out for your heads ! " The 
Colonel was afterward glad enough to get his own 
head exposed in the same Avay, and he became a good 
friend of the colonies. 

Once Worthington's barn Avas struck by lightning, 
and Phillis, a negro slave w^oman of his, proceeded 
immediately to put on her best, including a bright red 
petticoat. Mrs. Worthington asked her in some as- 
tonishment what she was going to do. She replied: 
" De barn am struck. I think de day ob judgement 
am about to cum, and I want to 'pears well's I can 
before de Lord." 

Rev. Mr. Howard was as prominent in a progressive 
way as the Colonel in his conservatism, and his home 
rule as rigid. At five in the afternoon, at all seasons, 
every door in the house was " opened and swung," 
which let in lots of pure air and hard colds. When 
coal was first introduced, he gave it a trial before the 
assembled family. It was placed on the embers, and, as 
it did not burn, it was solemnly and once for all pro- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 29 

nounced stone. He and the Colonel, in 1786, had a 
characteristic bout on the subject of a bridge over 
the Connecticut. Howard remarked, " T believe, 
Colonel Worthington, I shall live to see a bridge across 
the Connecticut river." The quick reply was : " Par- 
son Howard, you talk like a fool." When it was 
built, the road to it passed through the Colonel's land. 

But in a curiosity shop, one often enjoys best what 
is of least value. One of the out-of-the-way stories 
told of Moses Bliss is, that one day he heard that a 
deer was browsing in " hasseky marish." Taking a 
Hint-lock, he insinuated his knee-breeches among the 
bushes, a little back of the present Market street, 
where, sure enough, there was a veritable stag. As 
cool as a cucumber, he took aim, and holloed " bang " 
at the top of his voice. There w^as no bullet in his 
voice, and, as he forgot to shoot, the game escaped. 

Charles Brewer, who lived on Maple street, not far 
from the dingle, had a huge pear tree, after his own 
heart, on which he did the grafting and mulching, and 
sundry boys the harvesting. One day, seeing the lit- 
tle thieves approach, he bethought himself there was 
a hogshead near by where he could hide. The idea 
was too cute for anything, and he agilely crawled in. 
The boys saw him disappear, and had to stuff their 
elbows in their mouths to keep from laughing. They 
crept up to the hogshead, and set it rolling down the 
hill. For weeks, Mr. Brewer wore on his knees and 
elbows, the biggest knobs that ever w^ere. 



30 SPRINGFIi:LD MEMORIES. 

The father of Daniel Lombard, while at work on 
his Long-hill farm, once noticed through the corn a 
skulking Indian with drawn bow. He at once cocked 
his rifle, — then a vade-mecum. Both watched a chance 
to shoot, and neither dared uncover. After an ex- 
cited passage at this deadly game of peek-a-boo, the 
Indian backed out until he found shelter in the forest. 
It was a common amusement of the friendly Indi- 
ans, to take little children off in the morning, and 
return them at night to the frightened but non-resist- 
ant parents. 

A more civilized source of annoyance was thieving, 
and, along about 1830, in particular, the town was 
pestered with burglars, who caused much hair and 
garment rending, until a party, under Elijah Blake, 
put a stop to it. Meeting back of the Armory, before 
daylight, one Sunday morning, they searched the 
woods, Blake and Whitefield Chapin coming upon the 
camp in a dismal ravine on the Chicopee road, known 
as " Hog-pen Dingle." Blake entered first, and found 
but two men, — Marcus R. Stephenson and George 
Ball. The latter fled, but the former, reaching for a 
weapon, was throttled by Blake. In the struggle the 
robber's pistol fell, and Blake was hurled down a bank 
W'itli great force, but he recovered himself, and pur- 
sued Stephenson through the woods, till near enough 
to lay him flat with one fist blow. With the aid of 
Chapin, he Avas pinioned. Both robbers were subse- 
quently sentenced to state prison for life. They had 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 31 

in their possession over sevent}'' dollars in twenty and 
ten cent pieces, which they had taken, the night be- 
fore, from Ely's store at West Springfield, Twenty 
cent pieces were then plenty in jMassachiisetts, where 
they passed for their face value ; but in Connecticut 
they had depreciated to a shilling. A search in the 
house of Stephenson's father, corner of State and 
Oak streets, at which Major Edward Ingersoll was 
present, revealed that most of the stolen property 
was buried in the cellar. After twelve years behind 
the bars, Stephenson was pardoned out, and at once 
called on his old friend Blake, and had a good talk on 
old matters. 

During Shay's rebellion, Nathaniel Burt was taken 
prisoner by the West Springfield rebels, Luke Day 
and Alpheus Colton. Subsequentlj^, when Colton 
found himself in chains, and pretty near the gallows, 
he wrote Burt a penitent letter, never before in print, 
in which he says : "J try to bear up under the heavy 
load of mind that is upon me, but wish to God that I 
might be redeemed therefrom. In strict Justice I have 
merited death below, and Eternal death hereafter. 
I pray to be sav'd from the latter & that the former 
may not take place before I am prepared which I am 
not at present." He was spared, and for a very sin- 
gular fate, if tradition is to be trusted. It seems Burt 
had been subject to fits, but after being taken by the 
rebels they never came on again, and tradition saith 
that his captors had lots of 'em the rest of their days. 



32 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

The worst fit, though, was the one the negro "Jack" 
had. He was the husband of " Ginny," the slave 
woman whose freedom was bought from her master, 
Peter Van Geysehng, a Schenectady, N. Y., Dutch- 
man, by several citizens. " Jack " thought that at 
his time of life he ought to be the owner of a pair of 
boots. He had measurements taken, but, when done, 
he found they were no fit at all. He couldn't pull 
them on, as he had a trick of getting the heel in front. 
The maker he upbraided soundly. " Gor a sakes, 
Massa Gardner, you made 'em boots hind side afore." 
The original subscription list which was circulated by 
Daniel Lombard, for " Ginny's" freedom, is in the city 
library. One man refused to give anything, but, 
finding that his brother had, and that the money was 
about raised, repented and gave ten dollars. The 
Dutchman was so fearful that his slave would escape, 
that he slept in her little hut, and a good punishment 
he got for it, too, if at all up in the finer feelings. 
After she had come down with the money and was 
handed her freedom papers, she got up a jubilee din- 
ner, and made him eat as much as ever he could. 

Zebina Stebbins and wife, who lived up on Ferry 
lane, (Cypress street,) used to ride to church o' Sun- 
days in a one-horse shay. One morning, the old peo- 
ple did not appear on time, and the horse walked off 
with his empty shay. Stopping religiously, for a mo- 
ment, at the church door, he passed to the shed, where 
he remained about as long as a Puritan sermon, and 



SrRIXGFIELD ilEMORIES. 66 

then backed out, stopped again at the doors of the 
church and his master's house, and returned to his 
stable. In those days, whosoever was intelHgent 
above his fellows, was " as smart as Zebina's horse," 
and was proud of it. When Mr. Stebbins was over- 
seer of the poor, he had half a dozen paupers who 
were so old and infirm that they would probably die 
at substantially the same time, and, in order to drive 
a cheap bargain, he proposed to buy their coffins all 
together, and use them for storage boxes until then ; 
but somebody objected, and he abandoned the idea. 

In the smaller places, like Springfield, it ^vas an 
early custom to have one drinking mug on the table 
for water, and to pass it round. This was approach- 
ing the family tooth-brush nearer than the Knicker- 
bocker account of the lump of sugar pendant over the 
center of the table, where everybody with a good 
sugar tooth could get a convenient bite. It was a 
royal source of merriment among the young people of 
one of Springfield's first families, when the head of 
the family brought home a second wife, and she in- 
sisted on having a mug by herself. She was a New 
York Dutch bred lady, and could not come down to 
the one-mugged habits of the village. The staple 
bread was made of rye flour. Ordinarily, a man 
would buy a bushel or two of wheat, and have it 
ground. This was used for pastry, and would gener- 
ally last through the year. " Pop-robbin," a sort of 
milk porridge, was a great local dish ; and, at the time 



d4 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

of the Boston tea excitement, people substituted it in 
a lighter form, for tea. Mrs. Doctor Marble nsed to 
tell that, just after the war, she was invited out to 
breakfast (a better fashion than tea-parties), when 
she, for the first time in years, enjoyed a cup of tea ; 
but it didn't satisfy, and, on going home, she " filled 
up " w^ith hot porridge. Certain Avomen could not 
divorce themselves from their tea, and used to take it 
on the sly. On some, the suspicion of being secret 
tea-drinkers even loitered during the whole war. In 
the early part of this century, coffee was a luxury 
which few families enjoyed more than once a week. 
Burnt rye was used as a substitute, and was a common 
article of sale as late as 1822. 

The river was early filled with salmon, so that in 
seining for shad it was necessary to also take the sal- 
mon, strange as it may seem. At one time, the shad 
became a drug. A man was pretty " hard run who 
would eat shad." Foolishly enough, few people would 
admit that they ever lowered themselves to such 
depths. Indeed, they have even been known to 
snatch a shad from the pan, if a neighbor dropped in 
on them at odd times. A little later, one of the con- 
ditions in hiring a man was that he should eat shad so 
many times a week. Salmon, at the time of the Rev- 
olution, was called " Agawam pork," and it was a con- 
dition in buying shad, that a certain amount of this 
" Agawam pork " should be taken with it. Afterward, 
when fish were more scarce, it was customary to salt 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 35 

down half a barrel of shad and a barrel of pork, 
every year. 

William AmeF!, in reminiscences he wrote thirty 
years ago, for Mrs. William W. Orne, says that Jona- 
than Dwiglit told him there was but one clock in the 
village in 1753, and that people used to call at Josiah 
Dwigrht's to see it, and wait a lono; time to hear it 
strike. There were then but two chaises in town, 
horseback ridino; beinjif the common mode of travel- 
ing. Springfield was a three days' journey to Boston, 
until stages were established, when the distance was 
accomplished in one day, " to the great amazement of 
the public." The aristocratic snuff-box had pene- 
trated numerously to the Connecticut, and by the 
time this century began, snuff-taking was a very prev- 
alent evil. 

The only piano in the village, in 1810, was owned 
by David Ames, and James Dwight had one in 1822, 
and Mrs. Rev. Breck boasted of the first carpet. At 
the church, the leader of the choir w^ould start the 
tune by a preliminary toot on the square music-box, 
the size of a common hand Bible, with an aperture in 
one corner for a mouth-piece, and a slide below to 
regulate the key. Colonel Solomon Warriner was 
leader for forty-two years, beginning 1801, barring 
one break of five years. He sat in the gallery, back 
of the consrreo-ation. The " second treble " was on 
his right, and the tenor on his left ; the " first treble " 
were scattered all along the north gallery, and the 



36 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

bass opposite. Roberts, a Hartford music teacher, 
consolidated the choir, bringing them where they are 
now. The first rocking skates were sold by Ely, of 
West Springfield, where the boys on this side of the 
river went with their spare change to buy them. 
Doctor Chauncey Brewer, when young, was a fine 
skater, and once, when at Yale College, while darting 
over the ice, he came to a broad opening, and is said 
to have saved his life by making a thirty feet jump. 
In his old age he retained great vitality, and would 
work in the garden awhile, then come in and read his 
Bible, do a little more work, then return to Bible and 
pipe. 

Colonel Thomas Dwight once discovered a leak in 
his stock of butter. Suspecting a certain gardener, 
he invited him into the office, under peculiar circum- 
stances, and heated up the room ; soon sweat, then 
butter, came running down the fellow's face, and on 
lifting his hat, Mr. Dwight found butter in too large 
quantities for hair oil. This story is told in the 
" Introduction to the American Common School 
Reader and Speaker," by William Russell, who may 
have come to Springfield after it. Springfield is emi- 
nent for furnishing educators, especially in the matter 
of college presidents. Among them are President 
Burr, of Princeton, father of Aaron Burr, and de- 
scended from Jehu Burr, who owned the original town 
lot which the Worthingtons bought ; President Hol- 
yoke, of Harvard, grandson of Elizur Holyoke ; Pres- 



SPRIXGFIELD MEMORIES. 37 

iflent Hitchcock, of Amherst; President Day, of Yale ; 
President Colton, of Carlisle, Pa. ; Dr. AVilliam Harris, 
President of Columbia. Then the Dwights and Chaun- 
cies are represented by the Yale and Harvard presi- 
dents of that name, 

Jonathan Dwiglit once sharply told a clerk not to 
say " no " bluntly, "when a customer asked for some- 
thinfi" not in the store, but to sua:2:est another article. 
Shortly afterward, a lady inquired for some cheese. 
" No, marm, Ave haven't any, but we have an excellent 
grindstone." It is said the fellow lived on with the 
impression that that remark was too witty for any- 
thing. This Dwight store was a great place for all 
the notables to assemble, and in those large, green 
painted arm-chairs. Judge Hooker, Doctor Frost, and 
others, debated by the hour. It was at one of these 
gatherings, and in a discussion on the Trinity, that 
somebody made the statement : " No one can make 
me believe that James and John and Edmund Dwight 
are equal to the old man." Mr. Peabody's church 
was born at these green chair discussions, and the ex- 
citement and family jars that follow^ed are still re- 
membered. The accepted orthodoxy which remained 
by the common, dubbed the " N. S. E. W. " vane on 
the spire of the new church, as standing for " The 
New Society of Edified Wits." 

There w^ere many queer looking things to be seen 
on the public roads in early days ; for instance, on a 
Sunday morning, a man on horseback, with his wife 



38 SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

sitting on a cushion or pillion behind him, having one 
arm about her Bible, and the other about her master, 
and clinging close to both. This was riding " pillion," 
and went out of style with leghorn bonnets. If a 
fellow happened to be riding in the opposite direction 
from the meeting-house, he was very liable, especially 
if he had something handsome on pillion, to find a 
tithingman's long pole across the road. One of the 
Lombards was, one Sunday, carrying a sick child in a 
shay to the doctor, when he was stopped, and the in- 
fallible tithingman deciding that religion was suffering 
more than the child, compelled him to turn back 
toward home. 



CHAPTER III. 

FLIP DAYS m SPRINGFIELD. 

That tippling was more common at the beginning 
of the century, than now, everybody knows. There 
was not a dealer in the village who did not keep dis- 
tilled spirits, and every hired man took his constitu- 
tional both in the fore and afternoon. There are per- 
sons now living, who have seen eleven hogsheads of 
liquor sold at the old D wight store, on the corner of 
State street, before breakfast. This was when the 
store had seven branch houses, in as many surround- 
ing villages. Not a social gathering or gander party, 
not a marriage feast of parson's or deacon's daughter, 
not even a Sunday in the months with an " r " in, but 
there was a goodly show of wine or flip. When Eev. 
Mr. Osgood was settled, in 1809, he had an ordination 
ball. If there was " no flip nor nothing," then it was 
the exception. There is no doubting the fact, with 
all our sins and high living, we are a more temperate . 
people than we used to be, and our visions of the good 
old times might not be so enchanting, if they had the 
historical number of rum casks in them. Rev. Mr. 
Ballintine, of Westfield, gives in his diary the articles 



40 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

sent in for his daughter's wedding feast. In the hst 
are half a dozen gallons of rum, and as many of 
brandy. Among the other articles is mentioned flour, 
suet, butter, two pigs, a " loyn of mutton," veal, 
fowls, cranberries, apples, cabbages, potatoes, etc., etc. 
He adds that a " half Johannes " was given him as a 
fee, and he gave it to the bride. Rev. Stephen Wil- 
liams, of Longmeadow, in referring to his ordination 
feast, says he is afraid they were merrier than they 
ought to have been. 

It was customary for the parishioner, when the 
minister called, to set out a bottle of rum, and noth- 
ing less than this, except among the poor. It is 
told of an up-river minister, that he was once highly 
incensed, because one brother on whom he called, of- 
fered him a mug of cider, instead of the rum bottle. 
It was accepted as an insult, and w\t,s doubtless in- 
tejided for one. Before 1825. habits of drinking were 
accompanied with very free social customs. Much 
formality there was, to be sure, but, among the young 
folks, impromptu parties were frequent. A couple of 
young men would propose a ride to Chicopee, to get 
flip. In twenty minutes the horses would be hitched, 
and, stopping a moment for the girls, who would 
appear at once, — no pull-backs in their programme 
or their dress, — off they would go for the Chico- 
pee tavern. All this is a lost art, and, now-a-days, 
the average ''feller," in arranging a ride with a 
girl, allows three days to get her invited, and has 



SPEIXGFIELD MEMORIES. 41 

to wear a red ribbon in his button-hole, into the 
bargain. 

Fhp drinking was not confined to a few. The 
children and all, would warm their noses after church 
with it, and everybody knows it is made of much 
beer, little rum and sugar, and some hot poker. Most 
families had a " brewin " each week, and flip irons were 
" amazin' plenty." Drunkenness in Jefferson's and 
Monroe's time, was common. In 1829, the best 
French brandy Avas three dollars a gallon, and rum 
fifty cents. The standard of temperance was lower, 
and he who would have then been called a moderate 
drinker, would now be in danger of padlocks and 
things. In 1825, temperance societies were first 
formed, and the elder and more moral names of Spring- 
field were quoted against the movement, just as they 
were Avhen the young folks wanted to warm the 
meeting-house. But when they found it wasn't a sin 
to hear the Avord of God with warm ears, and that 
moral force is better for the drinking community than 
police force, both religion and temperance went up. 



CHAPTER IV. 
SPRINGFIELD TRADE HALF A CENTURY AGO. 

Modern Springfield was born with the peace of the 
war of 1812. In the re-action from embargoes and 
war, from 1814 to 1825, there was a general house- 
cleaning and business re-adjustment. The old tavern 
site was cleared off for a Common, a church and 
court-house built by the side of it, and another church 
(Unitarian), down Main street, Union and Court streets 
were opened, the river bridge, that had been swept 
away by a flood, was restored (1818), a line of boats 
was established between the village and Hartford, 
connecting with Boston and New York schooners, 
neighboring water-powers were utilized, many me- 
chanics and artisans were called in, who became resi- 
dents, and the Weekly Siyringfield Rejnihlican was 
started, which insured the place a future. In num- 
bers, Springfield was slow of growth, until the open- 
ing of the new " Bay Path " of rail and steam in 
1839, when it put on a spurt, and, in 1852, took out 
a license to sport mayors and debts. The larger in- 
fluence of Northampton had forced away Springfield's 
share in the county court sessions, and such business 



SPRINGFIELD MEMOKIES. 4d 

all came to be clone up the river. For, although the 
Pjnchons, Blisses, Brewers, Dwights, and Chapins, 
were favorably known, they did not have the wide 
reputation of the Northampton Edwardses, Dwights, 
Strongs, Pomeroys, and Clarks ; so that a friendly 
break in the family of the Eiver Gods was inevitable, 
and, in 1812, Springfield became the " capital " of the 
bran new county of Hampden. So progressive was 
the spirit of the place, that the year previous a meet- 
ing w^as held in Doctor Osgood's meeting-house, in 
favor of foreign missions. Many pronounced it a 
" dangerous and hopeless enterprise." 

As far back as 1810, the approaching clash of the 
old and new was suggested, when it was proposed to 
put stone bridges over the town brook, in place of 
wooden ones. A monstrous extravagance ! " The 
Worthingtons and Brewers had crossed on wood, and 
were we better than they ? " The Zulu heathen says 
the same thing to the missionary who advocates an 
upright door to his hut. " My father and grandfather 
have crawled on their knees through that hole, and 
so can I." The argument, however, did not carry 
Springfield. 

The best exponent of the local thrift of that time, 
is found in the D wight store on the corner of State 
and Main streets. Beginning before the Revolution, 
when the business center was a mile or more away, it 
grew to be not only the 'change of the town, but the 
largest Massachusetts importing house out of Boston, 



44 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

even rivaling many houses in the capital. Josiah 
Dwight started it, and it was continued under the 
firm names of J. & J. Dwight, J. Dwight & Son, and 
J. & E. Dwight. The most business was done from 
after the war until 1822, when James Dwight, the 
greatest merchant of them all, died. From this time, 
the changes of the firm were as follows: — Day, 
Brewer & Dwight (Benjamin Day, J. Brewer, J. S. 
Dwight), Dwight, Brewer & Dwight (J. S. Dwight, 
J. Brewer, Henrj^ Dwight), J. S. Dwight, then Homer 
Foot& Co., 1831, (now corner State and Main streets,) 
the latter being the legitimate successors of that fa- 
mous mercantile house. It was the policy of the 
house, as fast as its clerks learned the business, to 
start branch stores in the neighboring towns. Of 
these there were seven, — one at Westfield, North- 
ampton, Greenfield, South Hadley — at the canal, — 
Belchertown, Thompsonville and Chester. The one 
at Westfield was under the charge of Robert Whit- 
ney; at Northampton, under J. D. Whitney; and 
located at Greenfield, South Hadle}^, Thompsonville, 
Chester, were Lyman Kendall, Josiah Bardwell, James 
Brewer and William Wade respectively. All the 
goods, passing through the Springfield head-quarters, 
made that an important exchange place. Venerable 
men now living, tell about seeing a wall of woolen 
goods twelve to fourteen feet high, disappear in one 
day, and a little matter of eleven hogsheads of liquor 
vanish before breakfast, some of it not going to out- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 45 

of-town parties, either. The old firm of J. & J. 
Dwight had potash and pearlash works at Wilbraham, 
and a distillery opposite Josiah's house on South Main 
street, where cattle were kept to eat the grain, and 
where people in all the region round, went for " empt- 
ins " you know, so that their rye bread might be the 
best, — simply this and nothing more. 

Pretty much everything was kept at these early 
country stores, — Turks island salt, steel knitting-pins, 
Jamaica spirits, hum-hums, jeans and fustians, bake- 
pans, plane-irons, japanned waiters and mugs, pig-tail 
tobacco, cherry rum, etc. The Ely store at West 
Springfield made it a point to please the women in 
getting the divinest fashions, and it was next to im- 
possible to keep them from taking a constitutional 
walk over the bridge, and doing some trading. Many 
fine cattle in the early part of the century, were 
driven from Chicopee to the Boston market. On the 
pine plain the farmers made their own clothing, which 
was of stout woolen and tow cloth. 

The Dwight house and its branches, did much to 
develop the Chicopee water-power. In 1823, the 
Boston and Springfield Manufacturing Company was 
incorporated, with a capital of $500,000, and Jona- 
than Dwight, Jr., as president. From 1805 to 1822, 
Benjamin Belcher ran a furnace, at first from ore dug 
near by. Andirons and kettles were his specialty. 
In 1822, Chauncey Brewer and Joshua Frost, of 
Springfield, bought a paper mill at Chicopee Falls, 



46 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

and, five years later, it came into David Ames' hands. 
Ames had another mill on Mill river, and the road 
over Crescent Hill was opened to get at it more con- 
veniently. 

The Dwights ran a four-horse team to Boston, the 
year round, to do the smaller freighting. Teamster 
Bliss, who lived at the Ten-mile brook, presided over 
this four-in-hand, and, when the Dwight boys went 
down to Harvard College, he took a turn by Cam- 
bridge, so as to leave their bedding for them. 

The most prominent in this merchant line was James 
S. Dwight. Inheriting from his father his " good 
aspect and appearance," but more radical and daring 
in his modes, he became one of the leading mer- 
chants of the State, and w^as locally known as the " poor 
man's friend." It happened that he had many mar- 
riages in his kitchen, and the servants were about as 
well fitted out as his own children. His father, Jona- 
than, seemed to lack the crowning dash which is a 
part of genius, and, during the Revolution, through 
currency depreciation and his unpopular political 
views, he closed up his business, but afterward re- 
opened. Again, during the embargo, evil days closed 
in, but his shrewd, and wdthal daring son James, pro- 
posed that the father should stay at home, smoke 
his pipe, and let him take the hehn. This suggestion 
was followed. He bought heavily, sold quickly at low 
prices, and came out of the venture a wealthy man. 
James Dwight was forever doing astonishing things, 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 47 

and always winning in the end. He once came back 
from New York with six mortal barrels of wheat flonr. 
Father Jonathan embraced his paste knee-buckles in 
horror, clerks thought he was mad, and, next Sun- 
day, people who had often sung : 

" All my bones are made of Indian corn," 

with considerable rye porridge mixed in, talked the 
matter over after sermon. " Master Jim," however, 
took it coolly. He said : " I will take a barrel, father 
one, John and Colonel Dwight each one, and John 
Hooker another." 

This large inland depot of trade led to the estab- 
lishment of a line of coasters between Hartford and 
Boston, where most of their business was done, little 
of importance being brought from New York. This 
line was established immediately after the war of 1812, 
and was owned by Hartford parties, as well as the 
Dwights. There were half a dozen of these Old line 
schooners, and the captains were considerable men in 
their day. There was Ebenezer Flower, a man of 
wealth, and afterward mayor of Hartford. Then 
there were the locally well-known Captains Stew- 
art, Webber, Chalker, Henry Churchill and Wanton 
Ransom, of Portland, Goodspeed, of Cape Cod, and 
Warren Pease, of Hartford. Thomas K. Brace, of 
Hartford, was the agent. This coasting line brought 
goods around the cape to Hartford, for all the up-river 
towns, the rest of the way flat-boats with sails being 
used. This principal river line was owned by John 



48 SPEINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

Cooley & Co. Among the owners were the Dwights, 
Benjamin Day, and Roderick Ashley, now Uving on 
West State street. Parker, Douglas & Co., started an 
opposition, but were not very successful. A line be- 
tween Northampton and Hartford, was owned by 
Whiting Street, of Holyoke, Hiram Smith, Daniel 
Strong, of Northampton, and others. Samuel Nutt 
ran another from White river, and it ordinarily took 
a fortnight to make the round trip. When the wind 
w^as contrary, the loaded scows had to be either poled 
or rowed all the way up from Hartford, and in order 
to get the best w^ind, three trips a week were often 
made. If they unloaded at Springfield in the after- 
noon, and returned to Hartford during the night, they 
could come up, the next afternoon, with a tide-water 
breeze wdiich would kindly follow them to the landing 
at the foot of Elm street. When Ashley began boat- 
ing in 1820, there were ten of these boats, carrying 
twelve to fifteen tons, and w^orked by four men each, 
with long oars and tw^elve to fifteen feet poles, and one 
sail. Liquor was a large item of freight; often a 
boat would have nothing else. The boatmen had the 
privilege of drawing freely for their use, and it is 
related that several took all they wanted, and w^ould 
have taken more, if they had not died with the delir- 
ium tremens. 

About 1830, a new opposition line w\as started, 
owned and captained by Cape Cod men, Charles H. 
Northam, of Hartford, being the agent. A New York 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 49 

packet line to Hartford, about the age of the Old line, 
with the others, made the old Connecticut of consid- 
erable commercial importance, in those days. It was 
not an uncommon thing to see twenty-five flat-bottom 
boats start up the river from Hartford, of a morning, 
destined for points as far up as White river. The 
captains usually let their freight bills go until winter, 
when they would take a turn among the valley towns 
to "settle up." The journey of the good old sea 
captains into the interior, was a royal sight which, 
alas ! lives only in memory, and that, too, of short 
life, unless some of these local artists follow Kuskin 
closer, and paint the olden time for history's and 
taste's sake, instead of putting, as they everlastingly 
do, bright continental clothes on Washington's stereo- 
typed form, and mounting him on a horse which, if 
Jove, in the interest of true art should set a-running, 
would find his legs so bunglingly hung, that they 
would bump against every tree within a five feet ra- 
dius. We suggest for an art study this very subject : 
The Winter Arrival of the Sea Captains. They had 
freight bills as good as gold in their pockets, and rum 
in the casks, and sea songs and stories in the rum, 
when taken in proper quantities. As the D wights 
were the largest importers in the valley, their red 
store on the corner would make the best scene for 
such a painting. It was a common thing to see twelve 
or more of these captains with buckskin faces, show- 
ing their bills to "Master Jim," or lifting their 



60 SPEINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

" nor' westers " to Father Jonathan in small-clothes. 
And a painting of it, before the old folks who remem- 
ber it die off, might be made historicall}^ true and val- 
uable, and is surely worth an artist's while. 



CHAPTER Y. 
THE OLD MECHANICS' ASSOCIATION. 

A HANDFUL of mechanics met at the " house of Jer- 
emy Warriner," January 12, 1824, and organized the 
Hampden Mechanics' Association. It had a vigorous 
growtli, founded a hbrary and apprentice school, ran 
lyceuui courses, increased intelligence in the -work- 
shops, and, when the Young Men's Institute and 
changing times destroyed its usefulness, had the grace 
to die in 1849, age twenty-five years. 

It was in its nature exclusive, as none but those 
who had served a full term of apprenticeship, were 
eligible to its membership. An apprentice was taken 
right into the family of his master, and the nature of 
this apprenticeship may be understood from this sen- 
tence, in one of tiie annual addresses : "Apprentices 
are too apt to think their accountability to masters 
goes no farther than the workshop or working hours. 
This is a fatal error. A disregard of a master's coun- 
sels and admonitions, has led many apprentices to 
degradation and ruin. They should always be ready, 
when inquired of, to give an honest and frank account 
of the manner in which they spend their leisure 



52 SPEINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

time." Meetings were held, four times a year, the 
January gathering usually accompanied with an ad- 
dress, dinner, and toast-drinking, at some tavern 
where the new officers were inaugurated. The first 
president was Elijah Blake, and the first secretary A. 
G. Tannatt. Mr. Blake was regularly re-elected un- 
til 1830, when he was succeeded by Charles Stearns; 
the elder Samuel Bowles followed him in 1835, Itha- 
mar Goodman in 1837, John B. Kirkham in 1839, 
Joel Miller in 1841, Philo Willcox in 1842, David 
Smith in 1844, and, on the adoption of the new con- 
stitution, that year, EHjah Blake again. The associa- 
tion had now outlived its usefulness. Charles Stearns 
was made president in 1815, but after May, 1846, 
there is no record of meetings until 1849, when the 
property was sold. 

A feature of the proceedings of the association was 
the succession of addresses by its own members. A. 
G. Tannatt gave the first in January, 1828, in the 
*' library room," after which they proceeded " to the 
hall of Colonel Ebenezer Russell, (the present county 
house), and partook of an excellent supper. After 
which some excellent toasts and songs were drank and 
sung." At the next annual meeting, Samuel Bowles 
furnished the address, and the Hampden coffee-house 
(present Hampden House), things for the inner man. 
In January, 1830, Simon Sanborn gave an address, 
and in July, Samuel Bowles, the latter on " Printing." 
The following January, Charles Stearns at the " Parish 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 53 

House," lectured before a "large public audience." 
In April of the same year, (1831), the first meeting 
in Masonic Hall was entertained by A. G. Tannatt 
again. Henry Adams lectured, the same year, on 
" Chemistry as Connected with the Metals," and J. B. 
Eldredge on " Mechanic Arts ; " in 1832, Bidkar 
Jones, on "Operative Masonry;" in 1833, Edwin 
Booth, on "Electricity," and Charles Merriam on 
" The Practical Parts of Chemistry and Philosophy, 
and Usefulness of Heat;" in 1834, J. B. Eldredge ; 
in 1835, William B. Kendall, on the "Duties of Me- 
chanics," and Joel C. Miller on " Duties of Masters to 
their Apprentices;" in 1836, Elijah Bates; in 1838, 
Lewis Briggs, William B. Calhoun, Rev. William Rice 
on "Memory;" in 1839, Charles Stearns; and in 
1841, Rufus Elmer. They finally fell to asking out- 
siders to address them, which, of course, was inde- 
pendent of the lyceum courses they had instituted. 

The first year of the organization, one hundred and 
twenty-one books were given them for a library, and 
also one hundred and sixty acres of land in Illinois, 
the latter by Charles C. Nichols, of Boston, for a 
building. In 1828, thanks were given to Doctor 
Osgood, and others, for donations of books. Eight 
years later, the New Jerusalem church at Boston, 
gave a generous book donation. In 1838, is this rec- 
ord : " Mr. J. B. Kirkham laid before the association 
a bill of thirty dollars received by him from the pub- 
lishers of the life and writings of Washington, by 



54 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

Jarecl Sparks, requesting him to receive the work. 
Whereupon it was moved and voted that the associa- 
tion are under no obligations to receive the books or 
pay the bill." The funds of the association were 
never alarmingly huge, — just enough to support a 
small library and a hall, and annual dinner for the 
members. The association had a good many moving 
days. It met at Jeremy Warriner's house, the fol- 
lowing year in the Blake building, in 1831 in Masonic 
Hall, and in 1836, in Mechanics' Hall. When the de- 
cline began in 1844, monthly meetings were attempted 
at private houses, and this " boarding around " was its 
ruin. 

The apprentice boys, who were bound to the differ- 
ent members of the association as masters, were care- 
fully looked after ; for from these, mostly, was the 
organization to be increased. For them a library was 
founded, and a weekly night school. Mr. Bowles 
stated in a report, that this school had started under 
the charge of Mr. Nichols, and he was " to be assisted 
by Mr. Eaton, of the female seminary." Each schol- 
ar furnished his own " lamp, books, stationery, etc.," 
and paid one dollar per quarter. The school started 
with thirty, but was short-lived. To encourage tem- 
perance, a ten dollar gold medal was voted in 1830 to 
every apprentice serving his full term without drink- 
ing strong liquors. Captain Charles McClallan, of 
Chicopee, was the first to take the medal, and it was 
formally given him at a special meeting at Elijah 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 55 

Blake's house. But, two years later, with thirty-two 
promising gold-medal candidates, the affrighted and 
poverty-stricken association voted to throw the cost 
of the medals on the masters, the association to sim- 
ply put on its seal. It was contrary to the by-laws 
for one member to employ the apprentice of another, 
if he had run away or broken his pledge with his 
master. In October, 1829, Seth Flagg, according to 
the record, was expelled for employing the apprentice 
of Henry Adams, after a trial and heated discussion, 
the vote being seventeen to four. 

The only existing and visible sign of this early in- 
stitution, is the old oaken chair of dignity, in which 
the president sat. It is now owned by the heirs of the 
late John C. Stebbins, 471 Central street. In April, 
1832, Charles Stearns, A. G. Tannatt and Horace Lee, 
Avere appointed a committee to make two chairs out 
of the timber of the old Pynchon house, which had 
been recently torn dow^n. These were made alike, 
and are fine specimens of their mechanical taste and 
skill. The pattern is the then fashionable "fiddle- 
back " chair, with eagle's legs grasping spheres for 
supports. There may be better hand-carving done, 
now-a-days, but, taking this as a specimen of a com- 
mon country Avorkshop, it might serve as a text and 
sermon on how to get the best skilled labor. It was 
then customary for a sixteen-year-old boy to bind 
himself out till he was twenty-one, for board and 
clothes. Now it is a three months' putter at the 



56 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

bench, then a journeyman's wages or an independent 
shingle. One of these chairs was presented to the 
American Antiquarian Society at Worcester. Chris- 
topher Columbus Baldwin, the librarian, sent graceful 
acknowledgments "for so acceptable a memorial of 
the respect and veneration in which you hold the 
memory of the worshipful Major Pynchon, and for so 
fine a specimen of the mechanical taste and ingenuity 
of your valuable association." 

The lyceum courses, managed by the association, 
were quite an institution in those days, but hardly 
cleared expenses. The report for twenty lectures, 
during the winter of 1843-4, shows $253 received, 
on whicti they enjoyed a profit of thirty-one dollars. 
One of the items of expense was five dollars for hav- 
ing three hundred and ninety-two tickets printed. 
The monthly meetings at the different houses, which 
were applied as a reviver for the invalid association, 
were only gastronomically successful, as this report of 
one at Samuel Bowies', February 5, 1845, will show: 
" In consequence of the Aveather being very unpropi- 
tious, it having snowed all day, and the sidewalks 
being covered with something like eight or ten inches 
of snow, but few had the moral courage or physical 
force to venture abroad in the evening ; but, after 
partaking of the good things provided, hot coffee, 
sweetmeats, etc., no one regretted the visit." Those 
present were : Elijah Blake, Henry Adams, John 
Avery, Samuel Bowles, Joel Kendall, John B. Kirk- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 



57 



ham, John C. Stebbins, Franklin Taylor and Ithamar 
Goodman. In the fall followmg, October, 1845, the 
library of the association was placed under the care 
of the Young Men's Institute, with the understanding 
that all members of the Mechanics' Association could 
have a life privilege to draw books free of charge. 
This little collection of seven hundred books was the 
nucleus of the present city library, and the ten sur- 
viving members do not have to pay one dollar for 
their cards. 

The constitution re-printed in 1832, contains the 
following: list of members : 



Elijah Blake, 
Charles Stearns, 
George W. Callender, 
A. G. Tannatt, 
Bidkar Jones, 
Simon Sanborn, 
Lutber Bliss, 
John Avery, 
Edwin Pitkin, 
Ithamar Goodman, 
Philip Willcox, 
Francis Elliott, 
Moses Howe, 
Eldad Goodman, 
Otis Chapin, 
Alva Whitmarsh, 

8 



James Carpenter, 
John B. Kirkham, 
Edwin Booth, 
Simon Smith, 
John Kilbon, 
Daniel Reynolds, 
Joel Miller, 
Levi Flagg, 
Gideon Gardner, 
Philo F. Willcox, 
Lewis Gorham, 
William W. Wildman, 
Chauncy Chapin, 
Kalpli Bliss, 
Francis Colton, 
Jonathan Wright, 



58 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 



Franklin Taylor, 
Isaac Stevens, 
Elam Stockbridge, 
Sylvester Clark, 
George Gardner, 
Henry Adams, 
Carlo Smith, 
Harvey Sanderson, 
Horace Lee, 
Samuel Bowles, 
Charles M'Clallan, 
S. D. Sturges, 
Chauncy Shepard, 



Rufus Sikes, 
Samuel B. Hodget, 
David Smith, 
John B. Eldredge, 
Henry Booth, 
Lewis Bliss, 
Martin D. Graves, 
Franklin Clarke, 
Ocran Dickinson, 
Lewis Scott, 
Henry Sargeant, 
Charles Merriam. 



But the work of the Mechanics' Association was 
done, and the new monthly meetings and changing of 
its name to " The Mechanics' Association and Public 
Lyceum," were but a meddling with dry bones. Af- 
ter two or three years, during which no meetings were 
held, the twenty-four surviving members were called 
together for the last time, August 24, 1849, to dispose 
of the property and divide the cash proceeds. They 
made speeches, revived old mechanic memories, and 
received, after an auction sale of furniture, each an 
endowment of one dollar and thirty-three cents. 



CHAPTER VI. 

MIGRATION OF THE FROGS. 

The old dingle (cemetery), used to be a great 
stamping ground for the boys. It was well wooded ; 
a stream ran through it, and the mud was abundant 
enough, — and so were the frogs. 

The little bovs of creation ao;ree that the author of 
" My Summer in a Garden," is right about the virtues 
of dirt, especially that dirt which is near a stream of 
w\ater. Springfield boys knew all about this years 
ago, and it was daily carried home and brushed from 
little breeches, by silver tongued mothers. 

To the society of boys the frogs never objected, 
except when they asked for their hind legs. Such an 
offence to frogdom is even bearable. The loss of an 
occasional leg is a small matter ; indeed, an attention 
flattering to frogs in general, and to be sung about of 
a moonlight evening in the pool. It's a fastidious 
frog that will refuse his legs for an hour's service un- 
der the knife, and an immortality in song. 

Frogs have their tastes, though. There is a con- 
vincing positiveness about a boy with a fish-hook and 
bait. But tombstones, still, white, unexplained tomb- 



60 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

stones, that was a different matter in the minds of the 
frogs of thirty years ago. So when the commercial 
railroaders decreed that the old historic burying- 
ground must retreat from the river bank to make 
room for the cars, thus turning one of the finest nat- 
ural boulevards in New England into a hot-bed for 
young criminals, the frogs in their homestead, which 
they had occupied long before the scalp-twisters 
burned the old house of correction, in the woods near 
by, took hasty council and started, all of them, on a 
direct leap for Goose pond. This is a sober fact, at- 
tested by the late James W. Crook, who, going home 
about nine o'clock in the evening, found a portion of 
Walnut street literally covered with migratory bull- 
frogs. He could not step without lengthening the 
mortality list of the frog army, and it looked as though 
there was a gathering for a second battle of the frogs 
and mice. 

They took an unerring line, and on investigation it 
was afterward found that Goose pond was uncomfort- 
ably full of frogs, an unusual sight for those waters, 
and every frog a-singing a song, which, being inter- 
preted, is : 

Adieu to the dingle, 

To memory fond, 

We are forced to mingle 

Our bones with Goose pond ; 

while down at the dingle it was a deserted mud village 
indeed ; not a frog to be seen, only their foot-prints, — 
sad reminders of a ruthless fate which forced this 



SPEIXGFIELD MEMORIES. 61 

happy and established community out into the harsh 
world. 

The richly gowned philosopher demonstrates how 
the march of civilization and tombstones has been 
necessarily hard on the poor Indian and the frog ; and 
who with a heart can learn the ruthless treatment of 
this village of Springfield bull-frogs, doomed to the 
poorer reservation of Goose pond, and withhold a 
sympathizing and tributary tear ? 



CHAPTER VII. 

COURT SQUAEE AND THE ELMS. 

Time out of mind, the ground in front of the meet- 
ing-house had been a tavern site, plentifully shedded 
and barn-yarded, and, back of the tavern, sufficiently 
marshy, though dry enough in spots to allow room 
for trials of muscle. Many a well-oated filly or pillion 
horse has stood over his time in the stable, while a 
wrestling match was in progress on 'lection day, in 
April, or as an accessory to an out-of-town gander 
party. 

As has been before said, the spirit born of the war of 
1812, led to the opening of a Common. Church and 
business sentiment grew into a strong opposition to 
the monopoly of so fine a site for a tavern. The new 
meeting-house was finished in 1819, and as the sheds 
which extended back to the church, and right in front, 
were a grooving nuisance, it was proposed to buy that 
property, and lay out a Common. An influential ele- 
ment favored a site for the proposed Court-house and 
Common near the then new Unitarian church, down 
Main street. Wiser councils prevailed, and promi- 
nent citizens clubbed together to buy the tavern and 



SPKIXGFIELD MEMORIES. 63 

adjoining property, and after giving enough for a 
Common to the county, to cut up the rest for build- 
ino; lots, and thus save what thev could. The tavern 
was then owned by Erastus Chapin. Next to it, un- 
der the shade of the northern of the two large elms, 
was the house of Zenas Parsons, who had recently 
died. Parsons had sold to Eleazcr Williams, an ideal, 
dignified, scrupulously-dressed inn-keeper, who mixed 
a toddy with the dignity of a lord chancellor. He 
sold to John Burnett, and he to Chapin. Williams 
was often provokin'/ly slow in preparing drinks, 
especially if his dexterously combed hair was in the 
least displaced, and was known to have stopped to 
brush his hair and arrange the rufiles in his bosom 
and wristlets, to the great annoyance of the waiting 
customer. A w\ig once ordered a toddy of him, and, 
starting for the door, said: "I am going to Hartford, 
and hope you will have it mixed by the time I get 
back." 

The property bought by the citizens included, be- 
sides the tavern and Parsons house, the Moses Church 
lot, which extended to the river. Among the buyers 
were : 

Edward Pynchon, Dea. Daniel Bontecou, each 
$800; John Hooker, $700; David Ames, $600; El- 
eazer Williams, $400 ; Israel E. Trask, $300 ; Elijah 
Blake, $250 ; James Wells, Solomon Warriner, Alex- 
ander Bliss, each $200; Daniel C. Brewer, $150; 
Justice Willard, Thomas Dickman, John Ingersoll, 



64 SPEINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

Samuel Osgood, Japhet Chapin, Dr. John Stone, Mo- 
ses Howe, Thomas Sargent, EH&-ha Curtis, Ebenezer 
Russell, Charles Stearns, Simon Sanborn, Joseph Ca- 
rew, each $100 ; Henry Brewer, Sylvester Clark, Eli- 
sha Edwards, F. A. Packard, John Hooker, Jr., Joseph 
Pease, Pliny Chapin, each $50; Quartus Chapin, 
Lewis Ferre, Jr., each $25. 

The following persons gave their money uncondi- 
tionally, and therefore received no returns from the 
enterprise : 

Dr. Joshua Frost, $250 ; Jonas Coolidge, Daniel 
Lombard, each $100; Ebenezer Tucker, $75; Jacob 
Bliss, Oliver B. Morris, each $30 ; Edward Bliss, A. 
G. Tannatt, Francis Bliss, Eobert W. Bowhill, Roswell 
Lombard, James Chapin, Roger Adams, George Blake, 
each $20. 

Of the active promoters of this project were Dea- 
con Bontecou, Charles Stearns and Elijah Blake. The 
land for the Common and Court-house was reserved, 
and Court street opened to Water street, which then 
extended only a part of the way to Bridge street. 
Court street was the first one opened for the purpose 
of multiplying building lots. Union street was the 
next, and was born on Sunday evening, in 1825, in 
the parlor of John Howard, where he and Charles 
Stearns planned its location. Ithamar Goodman and 
George Gardner bought the old tavern, and a portion 
of it, corner of Court and Water streets, was recently 
resurrected for centennial purposes. The old Court- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 65 

house was sold to the First Parish, and used sometimes 
for a Town hall, a school, and for parish purposes, 
and is known as the " Parish house." Another part of 
the tavern stood for many years on Water street, 
where Palmer and Ashley afterward had a coal yard, 
and was removed thence to Union street for an Irish 
tenement. The Parsons house was bought by Joseph 
Winship, serving him as a bakery on the east side of 
Main street, and was afterward owned by Lewis Fos- 
ter. The Parsons and Church heirs were scattered, 
and the arrangement was made with Mr. Chapin, by 
giving him the lot on which he built, in 1821, the 
Hampden House, and $3,000 in money. The new 
Court-house was erected the same year, Captain Isaac 
Damon, of Northampton, being the contractor, and 
Charles Stearns furnishing the materials. A dividend 
of fifty-five per cent, w^as paid to those wdio had sub- 
scribed conditionally. 

In connection w ith the old tavern, is remembered 
the time when a couple of Springfield boys slept to- 
gether in the attic, on a bed made on the Uoor, as 
their twelve dollars per month wages would not allow 
better accommodations. They drove ox carts from 
the middle landing (foot of Elm street), where the 
flat-boats with sails, delivered merchandise to the va- 
rious stores, and their names were Willis Phelps and 
Chester W. Chapin. 

About a Common that came into being so commer- 
cially, and w^as wrapped in such speculating swaddling 



66 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

clothes, there can be little of romance or mystery. 
The only suggestion of it is in the two large elms, 
the number of whose days is unknown. The north- 
erly one is over ninety years old, and the other is old 
enough to be its mother. The average age of the 
rest is about sixty, the one in the south-west corner 
being planted by Elijah Blake, transplanted from the 
marsh (Market street), in 1820. Its birthday ought 
to be marked by a plate, so as to be a gauge as to 
the other trees. Edward A. Morris, Samuel Rey- 
nolds, George W. Callender, Frank Brewer and D. 
A. Adams, also aided in setting out and protecting 
the elms. 

The city fathers do not allow seats under the elms, 
and there is little chance for midnis-ht summer dream 

CD 

scenes as of old. Captain James Byers, of the Armory, 
offered to put in a fountain on the Common, if some- 
body would furnish the water supply. This was 
done by subscription, and the water was brought from 
Spring street. The Captain selected his marble in 
Italy, and took much pains to see that it was prop- 
erly set up. As soon as this fountain of Southern 
marble was taught to play in a Puritan twilight, that 
marvelous agglutination of all the " boss " wit, wis- 
dom and wickedness of the age, the little street 
gamin, put in a nightly appearance. One noisy night 
came a sudden silence and a scattering. The next 
morning the marble was found to be broken, and 
disorderly bubbles purling over the "remains." Old 



SPRINGFIELD MEMOPJES. 67 

people remember the wrath of Byers on discovermg 
the mutilation. Meeting an editor, he related the 
outrage. The editor remarked that *' boys who would 
do that are nincompoops." 

"Nincompoops, Mr. ? Have you no harsher 

term than that? You yourself should be punished 
for your lack of spirit, sir ! " 

The editor lost the momentary respect of his friend 
and the Common a fountain, as it was soon after re- 
moved. 

The Common has witnessed a good many exciting 
scenes. The two elms have held up above the crowd 
the effigies of Thompson, the abolitionist, and Bush 
the murderer, and seen families separated in anti- 
Masonic times, and knows how a young man, (the 
historian Bancroft), a candidate before the anti-Ma- 
sonic convention, in session at Jeremy Warriner's 
tavern, couldn't wait, and, impelled by the town ex- 
citement and a touch of self-interest, took the nomi- 
nations from the key-hole. 

The Common isn't much of a talker, though it 
is thankful for being raised out of a mud-hole, and 
would like a few seats to offer a friend when he comes 
a visiting. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

EARLY SIGHTS AND SCENES. 

A LITTLE six-year-old daughter of Vermonters, 
bound for the Centennial, trudging down the aisle of 
a New London Northern Railroad cnr, stopped before 
an elderly and well-dressed lady and said : " How 
nice you smell." The lady with the scented hand- 
kerchief blushed at so sudden an advertisement of it, 
and the girl, encouraged by the smiles of her parents 
and others, entered into bold and rude talk to the 
odoriferous stranger. One hundred years ago the 
older people did the talking and children blushed. 
At present it is just the other way. We are tempted 
into a jDarody of the passage in the play : — 

Who rules the country ? The people. 
Who rules the people ? The children. 
Who rules the children ? The devil. 

This is getting the devil into trouble, and it is his 
due to say that he is often polite, which is seldom 
true of the children of this ill-bred generation. 

There was a time when the aged as they walked 
our Springfield streets, meeting a crowd of school- 
children, would be honored by a short courtesy from 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 69 

all the girls, while the boys would take off their hats. 
Even a person passing in a shay was courtesied and 
bowed to. Children " did their manners," as it was 
termed, as soon as they arrived home, and also on 
enterinu; and leavino; the school-room. No child 
was allowed to answer back when spoken to, and in 
some cases, by a mystery of training which is lost, 
babies were instructed, like Susanna Wesley's nine- 
teen children, not to cry after they had arrived at 
the maturity of one year. It was an early custom 
in the prominent families of such country places as 
Springfield, for all the family, wife, children and 
guests to rise and stand when the father and husband 
entered the room. This is told of the Jonathan 
Edwards household at Northampton, and it probably 
originated in the minister's family from the great 
respect paid to the profession. Of a Sabbath morn- 
ing, after the good men and families were assembled 
in their respective highbacks, the minister, arriving 
in a black gown, would lead his family up the aisle, 
and at the first notice of his appearing the whole con- 
gregation would rise. When he had seated his fam- 
ily and mounted his pulpit throne, the people would 
sit amid the creaking of boots and thumping of 
warming pans, when the weather was cold, with 
perhaps a rap of the pole of the tithing-man who 
stood in the rear and presided over the boys collected 
together, apart from their families. This public re- 
spect paid the minister was continued in his family, 



70 SPEINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

and probably thus passed into other families of note. 
Obedience among children was pushed to a doubtful 
extreme. It was practiced with a vengeance at 
home ; reduced to rules, and printed in with the West- 
minster catechism, recited at school, and preached in 
the pulpit. The older people of this city think, from 
what they remember their parents to have said, that 
the distance between father and child was too great. 
In some families they were not allowed at the table 
until ten years old, though this was not probably a 
general custom. 

Child life was not particularly enviable. School 
kept every day but Saturday afternoon, which was 
occupied with preparations for Sunday, baking beans 
and making " auld claes look amaist as weel's th' new." 
The only school holiday, 75 years ago, was the day 
of the April elections. The common English branch- 
es and the Westminster catechism were principally 
taught, the qualifications of the "master" being a 
knack to continue in the school-room the discipline 
of the kitchen, and being a good mender of quill 
pens. Rev. Mr. Howard used to visit the schools, 
Saturday mornings, the time set apart for the cate- 
chism, and would hear the little ones " recite sancti- 
fication, justification and election," and would have 
in turn a word or two on the evils of insubordination. 
His set speech about amusements was : " Boys, play, 
but always play fair;" and what better? The illus- 
trations in their school-books were aimed more at 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 71 

religion than nsstlietics. One edition of the catechism 
has a wood-cut of the Martyr Eogers with the flames 
well advanced. Among the religious rhymes are : — 

In Adam's fall 
We sinned all. 
Thy life to mend 
This book attend. 
Young Obadias, 
David and Josias, 
All were pious. 
Xerxes the Great did die, 
And so must you and I. 

The latter couplet is prefaced with a picture of a 
coffin. If there was left any young incorrigible, 
there was added for his benefit a rhythmic dialogue 
wdth Christ, Youth, Death and the Devil as dramatis 
personce. Christ asks : — 

" Wilt thou, youth, make such a choice ? 
And thus obey the devil's voice?" 

Youth answers : — 

" Thy ways, Christ, are not for me, 
They with my age do not agree. 
If I unto thy laws should cleave. 
No more good days then should I have." 

Christ insists, and youth continues : — 

"Don't trouble me, I must fulfill 
My fleshly mind, and have my will." 



72 SPEINGFIELD MEMOKIES. 

Christ pronounces this doom : — 

" Unto thyself, then, I'll thee leave. 
That Satan may thee wholly have." 

Youth gets frightened and concludes to turn, when 
the devil enters : — 

" Nay, foolish youth, don't change thy mind, 
Unto such things be not inclined. 
Come, cheer thy heart, rouse up, be glad, 
There is no hell ; why art thou sad ? 
Eat, drink, be merry with thy friend; 
For when thou diest that's thy last end." 

Youth is incredulous, and the devil continues : — 

*' Thou mayst be drunk and swear and curse. 
And sinners like thee ne'er the worse. 
At any time thou maj'st repent. 
'Twill serve when all thy days are spent." 

Christ thinks him a vain youth and says : — 

" Oh, don't reject my i^recious call." 

Youth is in a " woeful case," and the sentence 
comes : — 

" Thy day is past, begone from me, 
Thou who didst love iniquity." 

Youth repents; Christ refuses him any longer to 
live, and death, entering, makes it pretty hot for the 
youth. His fix has undoubtedly been the turning 
point in the life of any number of little boys. An 
aged and intelligent citizen says he remembers that 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 73 

the zealous teacher often prajed and exhorted when 
she should have been hearing their lessons. She 
would talk to the scholars about the devil, who, she 
said, went round from house to house with a red-hot 
pitchfork to carr}'' off naughty children ; that death 
stabbed with a dart or spear, and that hell was a place 
where the wicked were burned in '• lire and brim- 
stone." The Westminster catechism must have gone 
"like hot cakes" after such lectures, and the school 
visitor, Saturday morning, would have a good word 
to say about the " likely children." The first thing 
every morning, was Bible reading, each scholar old 
enough reading a verse. It occasionally happened 
that some disturbance would compel the suspending 
of the Bible exercises. After the rod was put away 
aorain, the reading; would be resumed. The teachinor 
was largely arbitrary, — without explanation and 
profitless in most cases. 

The superstitions of New England are as remarka- 
ble, considering its modes of enlightenment, as its 
noble deeds, and much of it, like witchcraft, is traced 
to our ignorant puttering with the Bible. The deli- 
cious pictures drawn by local " school-marms " surely 
did not check it. Among the superstitions of Spring- 
field is remembered the belief that a consumptive 
would find relief bv the burnino; of the remains of a 
relation who died of the same disease. In 1814 the 
remains of a woman, named Butterfield, were dug up 
from the old cemetery. It was four in the afternoon 

10 



74 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

and, school being out, all the boys were present. It 
was on the north side of the Lane (Elm street) and 
the vitals were carried down to the river bank and 
burned. Galen Ames, of this city, was one of the 
school boys who saw the smoke from this altar of su- 
perstition rise from the river bank. William Ames, 
of Dedham, who also visited the place and saw the 
ashes, makes the bon-mot that the " relative died." 
The ashes were not applied to the person ; but there 
was another local superstition that did go to the 
ghostly length of personal application. It was be- 
lieved that " white swellings " in the knee could be 
cured by passing the hand of a dead man over the 
affected part, and it was often tried here and in other 
towns. Ministers universally discountenanced such 
"idiotisms ; " but in communities where a settled faith 
in veritable ghosts and walking devils w^ith pitchforks 
existed, belief in the virtue of grave medicines and 
tombstone tonics lingered the longest. Old Spring- 
field was not alone in her ignorance, and superstition 
did not die with her. 

Early Ncav England was nothing if not noble and 
sensitive to large inspirations, but she was also the 
fruitful mother of pale spirits and semi-Bible ghost 
demons, whose trade was to lurk in the dark and 
scare people. Nowhere in the enlightened world have 
ghost stories been related so historically and believed 
so implicitly as in New England. Even in sensible 
Springfield a desirable piece of real-estate, not far 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 75 

from Mill river, lost its market value for years and 
years, because it -was supposed to be inhabited by the 
ghost of a murdered man. People als^o used to be 
great believers in signs. Our historians might be 
tempted to strike out a glowing adjective or two 
from their description of the God-fearing Pilgrims, if 
they knew the number of days' works postponed be- 
cause a Puritan broke a looking-glass, or entered a 
room with a left foot, or forgot to pare his nails o' 
Friday. There never was a people of more pro- 
nounced extremes, — acting nobly and religiously, 
yet acting by the moon. 

The stories which were once told by the tavern 
fire are now pretty much lost. An occasional spark, 
however, is found among the ashes. Col. John 
Wortliington and Judge Hooker used to travel to 
Boston in company, and, while there, roomed to- 
gether. They say that once the judge noticed that 
his dignified companion, who was familiarly known 
as the "■ don," was in distress. He had unfortunately 
made a mistake in packing his linen at Springfield, 
and was vainly endeavoring to find the inside of a 
chemise defemme. Mr. Hooker's face saddened ; for 
the melancholy })art was that the blessed man did 
not see the mistake, and wondered what there was 
about Boston that would shrink a man's shirt so. 
Judge Hooker did a little shopping, that morning, 
before breakfast, for his friend, the " don.'' 

Among the early customs that hung on into the 



76 SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

century was that of posting public notices of inten- 
tion of marriage for three weeks. In Springfield the 
public place was the church vestibule. The notices 
were deposited for three Sundays in a mahogany box, 
covered with a wire screen, from which it was dubbed 
the " squirrel-box," and after sermon time it was 
often heard : " Let's see who's in the squirrel-box, 
this morning." It is a pity for ministers who value 
their sleep that the long wedding sermon and squir- 
rel-box have become lost arts ; for it takes a deal of 
patience to marry a couple religiously at midnight 
without any notice, as they often do nowadays.' 

The anecdotes concerning Rev. Mr. Osgood of the 
First Parish are numerous and about evenly divided 
as to authenticity. The predestination story told of 
Dr. Osgood and Rev. Mr. Howard, which has been the 
round of the papers, was incorrect in name and in- 
cident. Dr. Osgood had nothing to do with it at all. 
Mr. Howard, Mr. Osgood's predecessor and Rev. Mr. 
Storrs of Longmeadow, grandfather of Richard Salter 
Storrs of Brooklyn, N. Y., had arranged to exchange, 
and they met on the road, Sunday morning. They 
fell into a theological discussion, Mr. Storrs saying, 
" It is God's decree, that you should preach for me, 
this morning." Howard answered : " Then I'll break 
the decree. I'll turnback." To which Storrs replied : 
" Don't be a fool. If you turn back, it will be God's 
decree that you be a fool." It is on this Longmeadow 
road (near the present papier-mache works) that the 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 77 

ravine of Magawiscca is situated. This " slender, 
flexible and graceful " daughter of the Pequot Mono- 
natto is known to novel readers, who have admired 
her in Hope Leslie, with her waistcoat of deer-skin and 
her purple mantle, leaving free her bare and weather- 
brown arms. Few in this city are familiar with this 
spot, and it is well worth a visit. 

There are, however, some authentrc stories about 
Dr. Osgood. He was a man of large hospitality, 
entertaining much company, and was a generous lover 
of his kind, bluff and outspoken. He was one of 
Springfield's early abolitionists. At the time of the 
fugitive slave law excitement, his house was one of 
the stations of the " under-ground railroad " between 
the South and Canada, and large numbers were shel- 
tered there. During one year alone over 50 escaped 
slaves were concealed in it. He would give them 
letters of introduction to friends at the next station, — 
Greenfield or Charlemont, — and even furnish them 
money from his own pocket or raise it among 
abolition friends. Some preferred to take the risk of 
settling and became citizens, and among them Dea. 
J. N. Howard, our South church sexton. After he 
had been here some time he was forced to sell bis 
property at a nominal value and flee to Canada to 
keep his liberty, and the stories he tells during these 
fearful years of his life are of the real Uncle Tom's 
Cabin sort. One of the fuo;itive nesrroes who remain- 
ed here went into a hotel as a waiter. He was a short 



78 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

fellow, and had been known in the family of his 
master at the South as the " Little Doctor." One day, 
a stranger whom he was serving, said : " Some more 
steak. Little Doctor." The poor fellow thought his 
time had come, but Dr. Osgood advised him not to 
flee, and he was never molested. 

Many remember Mr. Osgood's misfortune in the 
pulpit. He onde knocked at a horn-bug and hit the 
lamp, which fell to the floor. He coolly waited until 
it was picked up, and returning it unbroken, said : 
" Good glass ! Let us pray." While preaching in the 
" Parish house " he suddenly asked, '" Who's asleep? " 
It was suggested that the noise was not snoring, but 
came from the ducks in the basement. Again he 
stopped," Some one is asleep." Profound silence and 
continuance of the sermon. A third time he stopped ; 
" Will somebody rouse that young man in the gal- 
lery ? " The young man was roused, and proved to 
be his own son, who, like Byron, woke to find himself 
famous. Another of his pulpit sayings was, " Will the 
brother in the gallery with the squeaking boots sit? " 
When the old Universalist church on State street 
was being built, the doctor accosted Governor Trask 
with, " Well, Brother Trask, what are you building 
here ? " Mr. Trask replied, " A house where the truth 
will be preached." " If it is," was the repartee, " there 
will be a scattering among the Universalists." One 
of the quickest replies is that given to Mr. Bacon : 
" Why is it, Mr. Osgood," he asked, " that they call 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 79 

the head of a hosj a minister's face ? " The doctor did 
not relish the slur on his profession, and said, " I don't 
know ; perhaps for the same reason they call the 
other end the hacon." 

One of the primitive convulsions which Springfield 
experienced was the murder of Mrs. Bush of West- 
field by her drunken husband. He took a fatal dose 
of opium in the Springfield jail, November 13, 1827, 
the night before the day of execution. As there was 
no omnipresent daily press to herald the news, a 
chance was given for a practical joke. A self-consti- 
tuted committee of three, with powers to send for 
persons and deceive them, visited Daniel Lombard's 
barn (Elm street) to get a ladder. While this coun- 
try postmaster, — wlio is remembered as wearing a 
queue but no small-clothes, and having a round, red 
face, white eye-brows, small piercing eyes, — was 
asleep, they obtained his ladder and manufactured an 
e^gy. The pants of that a^gy were seen on the 
streets, the day previous, covering a very respectable 
pair of legs. The " committee," — one of whom is 
now a New York merchant, another an elder in Dr. 
Adams' church, Madison square, New York, and the 
third a prominent personage who pays his taxes at 
Springfield, — pronounced their work a capital dupli- 
cate of the murderer, and it was suspended on the 
limbs of the northern of the two large elms on the 
Common. As this " standing committee " from their 
retreat watched the curious country who . came in to 



80 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

" the hanging," two remarks were invariably made. 
" Too late for the hanging !" and " We didn't come a 
purpose ; had business and came round this way," — 
which illustrates the Yankee trait of never admitting 
the " corn." No full-blooded Yankee ever " got sold." 
This New York elder was the rascal who manipula- 
ted the Jackson liberty pole, which was put up near 
the corner of State and Walnut streets in 1829. The 
Jacksonites tied a dog to watch it, and also stationed 
a couple of men there. The men were induced to 
visit the tavern, and the coming elder fed the dog 
meat, meantime boring the base with an auger, and 
dodging down whenever the door was opened by the 
watchful enemy. Soon down came the pole, and out 
came the enemy ; but the fellow started across the 
Armory grounds, escaped the guards and disappeared. 
A reward was offered for his arrest, but the govern- 
ment watchman called the hours as the election ap- 
proached in blessed ignorance, and the culprit still 
lives. 

The early appearance of the houses of Springfield 
was unprepossessing ; though, soon after the Revolu- 
tion, travelers described it as a neat and orderly place. 
There were but two brick houses, and the others w^ere 
shabby and unpainted. As the Armory grew, red, yel- 
low, and brown-colored buildings multiplied, and in 
the village red was a favorite color, as it was at Long- 
meadow, where nearly the whole street was lined 
with bright red homesteads. There were no porti- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 81 

COS, piazzas or columns. Timothy Dwiglit says that 
it was customary in early times for people to turn in 
and rebuild men's houses when they were burned, 
and at Springfield, as elsewhere in New England, two- 
thirds of the people slept with unbolted doors. 

They were not such awfully innocent people, though, 
as all this comes to. John Adams said he was 
ashamed of the age he lived in. With simple faith 
in Puritan blood a citizen of Brookfield and a friend 
undertook, this memorial year, to make a genealogical 
table of their respective families. They have both 
stopped. One only got back to George Ill's time 
and found that two of his line died on the gallows, — 
and he has gone into business at Chicago, where he 

has no time for study. 
11 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE BRECK CONTROVEESY. 

The most peculiar episode in Springfield story, and 
one little dwelt upon in the books, is the church feud 
of one hundred and forty years ago, which ended in 
the settlement of Rev. Robert Breck over the First 
Parish. Radical in speculation, and daring in its ex- 
pression, Rev. Robert Breck found himself, at twenty- 
two years of age, in a strange neighborhood, con- 
fronted by Jonathan Edwards, and the stiff theology 
of the river. In a sermon at New London, he had 
charitably said : " What will become of the heathen 
who never heard of the Gospel, I do not pretend to 
say, but I cannot but indulge a hope that God, in his 
boundless benevolence, will find out a way whereby 
those heathen who act up to the light they have, 
may be saved." The news of this alarming hope 
came to Springfield through a letter of Rev. Mr. 
Williams, of Mansfield, Conn., who referred to the 
Rev. Messrs. Clap and Kirtland, as persons willing 
to testify to Mr. Breck's unfitness for the ministry. 
As the matter grew serious, other and earlier sins 
were added to the list. He had stolen books when 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 83 

thirteen years old, while a Harvard student, and had 
afterward denied it; he doubted the inspiration of 
the 8th chapter of John ; he had called Mr. Clap a liar; 
he believed that there was no difference between his- 
torical and saving foith ; that there might be articles 
of faith not contained in the Scriptures ; that there 
was no encouragement to duty if God's decrees were 
absolute ; that God might forgive sin without any 
satisfaction, etc, etc. These he had only expressed 
before he was of age, in discussions, and were not 
given as his settled belief. The juvenile theft of 
books was admitted, and forgiveness asked ; but when 
he was first charged with it l)y Rev. Mr. Clap, the story 
was so garbled that he denied it, and thus laid him- 
self open to a charge of prevarication, the most seri- 
ous one against him. But, in the minds of the River 
Gods, heterodoxy was his crime, and when he came 
to Springfield, in 1734, he found them eyeing him 
with suspicion. 

In August, the Springfield church called Rev. Mr. 
Breck. Two months later, the objections to his set- 
tlement were read before the Hampshire Association 
at Suffield ; and the matter here dropped, as the 
church did not accept Mr. Breck's terms. But in 
November it came up again, it having become known 
that certain persons of note had obstructed his pro- 
posed settlement, and the church voted to get the 
advice of the ministers of the county, and six of the 
thirteen were opposed to another call. The advice 



84 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

was not followed, and Breck again returned to Spring- 
field to meet determined opposition. In April, 1735, 
the church formally asked the association what were 
the objections to Mr. Breck, and what the remedy. 
They recommended that the matter be referred either 
to the Windham (Conn.) Association, or a committee 
of Hampshire ministers. This recommendation was 
also rejected by the church. They did not wish to 
migrate, in order to settle a dispute, and Rev. Mr. 
Williams, of Longmeadow, one of the committee of 
the local association, was known to be prejudiced 
against Breck. They offered to submit the case, if 
Mr. Williams was not on the Hampshire Association 
committee, but Mr. Williams did not see fit to with- 
draw, and the association supported him. The case 
had thus not been put into the hands of the associa- 
tion, except for advice, and the church had clearly a 
right to call a council to try Mr. Breck with a view of 
ordination. Jonathan Edwards claimed that the asso- 
ciation was the only proper judge of the case, — on 
what Congregational grounds does not appear. To 
mend matters, Breck asked that ministers from abroad 
sit with the association to try the case. Many ob- 
jected to this, though the moderator, the venerable 
Mr. Williams, of Hatfield, did not. 

Mr. Williams' course in this matter, however, is 
very singular. While stating that he was in favor of 
the calling in of foreign ministers, he did much to 
prevent it. In July, Rev. William Cooper, of Boston, 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 85 

wrote Mr. Williams at Breck's request that, when the 
matter came up again before the association, two or 
three from abroad might be asked to sit with it. Mr. 
Williams coldly replied : " I think it not proper for 
me to ffive Advise or Encouragement to the coming 
of other Ministers to manage that Affair, wliich would 
serve to cast a Reflection of insufficiency or unfaith- 
fulness on the Ministers of the County, which I know 
no cause for ; nor doth it seem to have a Prospect of 
promoting his Comfort or of the Peace and Love 
among the Ministers of the County." After the 
church had called its council, Mr. Williams wrote the 
Boston members that had been called to it, " I can't 
but take it something hardly that, upon Mr. Breck's 
bare Word, they (Boston churches) should think so 
meanly of us as to count it necessary to send their 
Ministers and Delegates to interpose in that affair." 
It is surely good Congregationalism to accept an invi- 
tation to sit in an ordaining council, and the Boston 
brethren replied by proposing that the association 
meet at Springfield, instead of Deerfield. Rev. Mr. 
Williams' answer was that the local ministers had 
been illy treated, and they refused to do it, unless 
the case was left with the association. Yet Mr. Wil- 
liams' letter to Mr. Pynchon, of the Springfield 
church, was entirely of a different character. Re- 
ferrino; to this offer of the Boston brethren, he said 
he would accept it, and use his influence with the as- 
sociation to that end, but expressed the opinion that 



86 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

the proposed meeting was impracticable. He thus 
built up a home reputation of favoring a meeting of 
the association at Springfield, on the day of the meet- 
ing of the ordaining council, and yet did much to 
prevent it, by such cutting letters abroad. 

A joint letter to the Springfield church was written 
by Mr. Williams, Samuel Hopkins, Jonathan Edwards 
and N. Bull, dated August 14, evidently in Edwards' 
handwriting, in which they say : " We account it pre- 
posterous for ye church of Springfield to call him 
(Breck), or for him to accept n call to ye ministry 
till ye matter objected against him has been duly 
inquired into. * * * We hardly think any num- 
ber of ministers will be found to serve the scheme of 
Springfield and Mr. Breck." The right of Mr. Ed- 
wards to stigmatize a regular council, to try a minis- 
ter on definite charges, a " scheme", must be doubted, 
as must also be his Congregationalism, when, a few 
days before, he had said the association was the only 
proper judge of the case. According to history, a 
Congregational church has exclusive control of its 
own affairs, and the association is an organization of 
ministers — not of churches — for mutual benefit, hav- 
ing the privileges of disfellowship, giving of advice, 
and other things of that nature. The singular claim 
of sole jurisdiction set up by the Hampshire ministers, 
of course precipitated an explosion. 

The day set for the ordination was Wednesday, Oc- 
tober 8, 1735, [0. S.] The weather had been cold, and 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 87 

doors were closed throiigliout the colony. The slice, 
fire-broom, back -log, and the pent-up aroma of baked 
beans and " brewins," again lent an added charm to 
New England home life. A week before the meeting, 
the Rev. xMessrs. Cooper, Welsteed and Mather, of 
Boston, and Cook, of Sudbury, undertook the journey 
through the woods to Springfield. The prospect for a 
friendly reception, was as cheerless as the weather. 
Cooper and Welsteed called on Mr. Williams at Long- 
meadow, where they found it would be fruitless to 
call upon the Hatheld Williams. The result was, 
that the two parties kept coldly apart; which in 
point of Christian courtesy the local ministry should 
not have allowed. The Longmeadow Williams was 
more conservative, and at least more consistent than 
his Hatfield namesake. He was pretty firm in his 
opposition to Mr. Breck, and he personally advised 
the putting of certain evidence against him on rec- 
ord, over the signatures of Pyncbon, Worthington, 
and others, but he also opposed the civil interference 
of the council. 

The ordaining ministers were entertained at Madam 
Brewer's (on the site of Fallon's block). Her daugh- 
ter. Miss Eunice Brewer, was then at home, and here 
boarded also the young accused. These two young 
people were pretty well agreed on things besides the- 
ology, and a novelist might have a good word to say 
about it ; for she was a Chauncey, descendant of the 
Chauncey who came over with William the Conquer- 



88 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

or, and whose family married into the Saxon line of 
kings, and up in the cemetery in this city is a pre- 
revolutionary grave-stone with this inscription : " Mrs 
Eunice Breck, the Virtuous Consort of the Rev'd 
Robert Breck and Daughter of the Rev'd Daniel 
Brewer." 

The council, consisting of Chauncey of Hadley, De- 
votion of Suffield, Rand of Sunderland, Cooper, Wels- 
teed, and Samuel Mather of Boston, and Cook of 
Sudbury, met with closed doors in a chamber of the 
parsonage, on the morning of October 7. The Hat- 
field Williams was also included in the letters missive, 
but he declined the invitation. Rev. William Cooper 
was chosen moderator. The " dissatisfied brethren " 
of the Springfield church, being asked to appear 
against Breck, wished a delay until 3 p. m., when 
they presented their charges, but declined the proofs, 
as the council, they claimed, was not legal. This 
was going farther than Edwards had advised, but the 
feverish state of public opinion had had its effiect 
upon them. The hostile ministers had arrived, bring- 
ing with them some justices from Northampton. 
They all " put up " at one tavern, with some strang- 
ers, where they were visited by the " dissatisfied," 
and many curious rumors were afloat. The next 
morning, Wednesday, 8th, the council insisted on 
proofs to the charges preferred, and were refused ; 
but the information was volunteered that the Rev. 
Messrs. Clap and Kirtland, from Connecticut, were in 



SPEINSFIELD MEMORIES. 



89 



the Village, and that they ^vere Mr. Breck s pnnopal 
accusers" A brisk word and pen d-uss-onfo low d 
between the council and these gentlemen result ng 
in the latter's making a written statement. As thi. 
was the day set for the ordination, " the usual prep- 
arations for entertainment " were postponed 

The hostile parties in this smgular contest, thus 
found themselves face to face. Mr. Clap afterward 
president of Yale College, began to read, and Mr. 
Breck undertook to answer him as he proceeded 
which was not allowed. This secret chamber trial 
was indeed a memorable scene,-seven w.gged judges, 
two accusing wigs from another State, and the broad- 
shouldered, high-bred, generous-hearted boy mm.ster, 
whose large inspirations had charmed a vdlage con- 
gregation, and given a shock to the Connecticut river 

Calvinism. . . j i 

Mr. Clap proceeded, and was again interrupted by 
a messenger who had arrived on horseback. Ihey 
held a private conference, and he rode away with 
convenient speed." The suspicion that Clap had di- 
vub-ed something to an outsider, was confirmed by 
the°appearance o£ an officer for Breek's arrest as 
Mr. Clap finished, and just as Breck was on his feet 
for a reply. Holland, in his History of Western 
Massachusetts, says: "After they had assembled, the 
sheriff, with his posse, marched to the house where 
they were in session, surrounded it with his force and 
then, with a drawn sword in his hand, entered the 



90 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

room where the council were examining the candi- 
date. There, in his majesty's name, he arrested Mr. 
Breck, and ordered him to prepare himself immedi- 
ately for a journey to New London." He adds that 
Breck offered bail, which the sheriff first refused, and 
then accepted, — but a sheriff doesn't have any power 
to take bail in such cases, and, as the warrant was 
not for his appearance at New London, but before the 
justices, there is evidently more paint than history in 
this account. The prisoner was taken to the Town 
house (on Sanford street), amid the wildest excite- 
ment. Violence was threatened, but through the 
wise advice of members of the council, this was pre- 
vented. Justices Stoddard, Dwight and Pumroy had 
arrived at the Town house. The usual manner was 
for the bell on the Town house to ring as the digni- 
taries leave the tavern in line, preceded by a sheriff 
with a tithing-pole. The attending crowd lent unu- 
sual importance to these manoeuvres, which were in- 
deed dramatic for so rural a stage. 

As the ministerial prisoner was brought in, procla- 
mation was made before the crowded and breathless 
assembly, for any who would testify concerning Mr. 
Breck's principles to appear. This was a triumphant 
moment for the home party, and they did not disguise 
it, especially the "radiant countenance of a distin- 
guished personage from Connecticut." The first 
proposition of Breck's enemies had been to arrest the 
Boston part of the council, and this was the plan 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 91 

when the council met ; but, after the warrant was 
drawn up, one of the justices was in doubt. His 
hesitation settled into a final refusal, and one was 
hastily drawn and signed for the arrest of Mr. Breck 
himself. The secret conference of Clap and the mes- 
senger, may have had reference to this change of tac- 
tics, and the arrest was indeed a surprise all round. 
Clap, Kirtland, and others, gave the evidence which 
they were presenting to the council. Meantime, the 
astonished body of ordainers, finding themselves with 
no one to ordain, sent a couple of their number to 
the Town house, with a respectful protest against 
these violent proceedings, and claiming that they 
were a regular council, trying Breck on the selfsame 
charges that caused his arrest. The prisoner, how- 
ever, was detained until evening, when he was re- 
leased on the word of several of the council that he 
would return when summoned. (A debate on Mr. 
Breck's bail may have been the occasion of Mr. Hol- 
land's confusion in his account.) 

The next morning, (the 9th), the ordaining council 
began its third day's session, but it was again inter- 
rupted by a summons from the justices. 

It was afternoon, and the council had adjourned ; 
but some still lingered in Madam Brewer's chamber, 
engaging in a fireside discussion, when a member of 
the church asked for a copy of Mr. Breck's confession 
of faith. This was given him, and he retired to read it. 
Inconsiderate friends called together a crowd in front 



92 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

of the parsonage. A young theologian mounted a 
horse, and read aloud to the crowd this concise piece 
of technical theology. It was accepted as an honest 
statement, and a deepened feeling of the outrage 
practiced on the church, was engendered. By this 
time the " dissatisfied " had won their case at the 
Town house, and the justices had signed the warrant 
for Breck's removal to New London, a number of the 
church being chosen to accompany him in ''token of 
respect." There was the wildest excitement as he 
approached the street from the Town house, in the 
custody of the officer. The bulk of the yoemen, 
loyal alike to King George and to their Puritan sense 
of justice, respected the officer and honored the pris- 
oner, by accompanying them through the towm, and 
a short way on their journey south. This turn of 
affairs had enlisted the inhabitants independent of 
church, in favor of the young man whose crime was 
a charity broad enough to save ignorance the damna- 
tion of wickedness. Again the council were called 
upon to check this popular indignation, and, the fol- 
lowing morning, October 10, the church undertook a 
private conference of prayer, but finally the doors of 
the meeting-house were thrown open, and a charac- 
teristic New England scene — a public meeting of 
humiliation before God — followed. This was Friday, 
— a " Black Friday " of the olden time, caused by 
an attempted " corner " on Calvinism, — and we have 
the simple chronicle that it was a " large and weep- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 98 

ing assembly," which listened to " a seasonable dis- 
course." 

The next morning, — for in those days, through 
prayer or something or other, people had a way of 
bringing things to pass, — Mr. Breck returned from 
New London acquitted, and there were great felicita- 
tions among the people. The council, still in session, 
announced Mr. Breck orthodox, but the ordination 
was postponed. The case cauie up before the Legis- 
lature, which voted that the council was a regular 
one ; that, though the justices had right by law to 
inquire into the extraor(^inary facts charged on Mr. 
Breck, yet they ought not by any means to have in- 
terrupted that church and ecclesiastical council while 
they were in the exercise of their just rights, inquir- 
ing into the same. Another and successful attempt 
at ordination occurred in January, 1736, Rev. Mr. 
Cooper delivering the sermon. 

In April, Mr. Breck crowned his success by leading 
to the altar the daughter of his predecessor, and his 
strong and simple ways, his rugged manner of putting 
the essentials of relio;ion, and foro-ettins: the rest, soon 
disarmed his enemies, though they were slow in yield- 
ing. A month later, they petitioned the justices to 
compel the church to settle an orthodox minister. 
The warrant under this petition is in the hands of 
Richard Beebe, of this city, but the matter w\as never 
pressed. On the 22d of March, Mr. Breck had a talk 
with D. and John Chapin, of the " dissatisfied," and 



94 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

they expressed themselves after the interview as "just 
as much dissatisfied as ever." But Mr. Breck grew, 
and during forty-nine years of good preaching the 
church grew with him, and he now lies with his con- 
gregation up in the cemetery, having made a gener- 
ous contribution toward liberal Christianity. 

Mr. Breck might have done more, perhaps, if he 
had not yielded to the times so far as to subscribe to 
that confession of faith, Calvinistic enough to include 
by implication the damnation of babies, which was 
read at his ordination. His willingness, however, to 
yield all he could in conscience, was one of the lines 
of his power with the people, and, after the matter 
was over, the Hampshire ministers were in such an 
awkward position, they were forced " by the Clamour 
that the County was filled with against us," to issue 
a couple of pamphlets in defence of themselves. In 
one of these they insisted that a retraction, as well 
as a confession, should have been read at the ordina- 
tion, quoting the case of Barrett at Cambridge 
(England), in 1554, who had to retract and express 
humiliation for doctrines far less corrupt than Breck's. 
The three pamphlets issued in this matter were not 
in the best spirit on either side, and are better exam- 
ples of special pleading, than of a broad regard for facts. 
It is a curious fact that the more serious charges of 
stealing books and prevarication, were left in the 
background, the ministers claiming that their printed 
account of it, as given by Mr. Clap, was " without 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 95 

one reflection on that particular ; we never made it 
an article as!;ainst him," which indicates how theoloff- 
ical speculation may be carried on at the expense of 
morals. 

But the best part of it is, that in those days men 
came honestly by their differences, though they had 
unpleasantly peculiar ways of propagating their no- 
tions. After it was all over, it is good to see Mr. 
Breck asking his enemy, the Longmeadow Williams, 
to officiate at his marriage, and to hear the noble man 
of God, as he grasps the young minister's hand say, 
" Brother Breck, I had objections to your settlement, 
but I know no reasons why you should not marry," 
and he married them. When the time came, Mr. 
Breck returned the compliment, as Dickens' bore 
would say, by preaching Mr. Williams' funeral ser- 
mon. 



CHAPTER X. 

FASHIONS AND THINGS. 

Saj's Aaron to Moses 
''Let's cut off our noses." 
Says Moses to Aaron 
" It's the fashion to wear 'em." 

And Mother Bunch isn't the only mortal who has 
said wise things on the subject of fashions. They say 
Fashion is the most despotic and whimsical Queen 
that wears a crown. But it is not so certain that 
there is not philosophy in her annual decree about 
the tip of a hat brim or length of a petticoat. The 
''Almanac de Savoir-Vivre " charges upon Saint Beuve 
eight offenses at the Emperor Napoleon's dinner table, 
and your constitutional independent smiles at such 
society thumb-screws. However, the trait in human 
nature that bows to changing modes of dress and eti- 
quette is quite as important as that which resists it. 

It was not a whim that Paris and the obedient 
world of fashion changed its dress so radically in 
1789-90; it was philosophy or philosophy run mad 
that did it. You often can read a man's religion and 
philosophy in his coat-tail. The African missionary . 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 97 

says that the first sign of regeneration in a naked sav- 
acre is seen in a desire for decent covermg for his 
body, and they consider him on the " anxious seat 
^vhen he puts on a shirt. The christianizing influ- 
ence of a shirt-tail may not be so apparent here, but 
in the desert it " makes for righteousness." History 
teaches that a revolution in thought or politics is 
followed by a change of tailors. When Robespierre 
fell red ni^^ht-caps and wooden shoes went with him, 
and monstrous swallow-tails, sharp toed slippers and 
cocked hats appeared, and the ladies wore the classi- 
cal style the - mcrveilleuser with loose hanging 
dress and no waist to speak of, attempting a nude 
simplicity. In America, by the beginnuig of this 
century, those who are familiar with their garrets or 
have attended centennial tea parties know that even 
the small towns in New England had attained to 
sufficient nuditv in their dress-gowns. The waist was 
directly below the bust and was a very few inches in 
length The embroidered petticoat was short and the 
overskirt caught up with roses ; and the sleeves a little 
below the elbow. You have but to recall the morals 
of the early part of the century to see proof that 
styles mean something. It was not by chance that 
Franklin appeared at court in a suit of sober brown, 
and that as by magic, lace and embroidery and pow- 
dered curls were put away and for the moment straight 
brown coats and straight cut hair were all the rage. 
To go back farther, it was no trick that the men who 



98 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

came over in that rented vessel, the Mayflower, had 
broad-brimmed hats and long coats, straight as the 
yard-stick of their morals, thus differing from the 
more festive apparel of the English owners of that 
bark. The fight of the Continentals and Red Coats 
over the historic rail fence, down Boston way, was a 
fight over a change of fashion, the old and new fash- 
ion of government. Charles VII. of France may have 
adopted long coats to hide his awkward legs, and been 
justified in thus setting the fashion; Henry Plantag- 
enet may have invented the long pointed shoe to 
cover an excrescence of toe ; the male world may 
have cut its hair once on a time because Francis I. 
was compelled by a wound to do it, and the female 
world may have put on hoops because a certain queen 
did it in order to hide " an accident in her history; " 
still it surely is true that the world does not dress by 
accident. The dress of the Puritans in 1620 was a 
caricature on propriety compared with their English 
brethren of the court, though the same dear queen of 
fashion reigned at Paris. And the change in dress so 
marked between the early settlers and our Revolu- 
tionary fathers indicate how thought had changed. 
Cast-iron religion had been softened, though its valor- 
ous purpose of independence was retained. The broad 
brim was doffed for the cocked hat and it indicated, 
as that hat always did, authoritj^ with the new inter- 
pretation of power from the people instead of a myth- 
ical " divine right " to rule. 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 99 

Thus, then, it is no idle curiosity that one seeks his 
great grandmother's wedding dress and shoes, for he 
may learn of the character of her age. Without 
undertaking to give the names of the Springfield fam- 
ilies that have preserved the fe\y scant remnants of 
early ways, we may draw, perhaps not far from the 
real, a picture of a common housewife, living on 
Springfield Main street, any time from Queen Anne's 
war to the Revolution. She stands in the low raftered 
kitchen, perhaps with no tloor but the hard polished 
clay surface, looking through the small paned win- 
dows [7 X 9, or 9 X 10], toward the river to which 
her husband's home lot extends, and waitinu; liis arri- 
val ; for there are canoes hitched along the bank at 
the foot of every lot, and, in the summer, it is almost 
the only means of conveyance. All the hay and wood 
and crops are thus taken from place to place. He 
soon arrives in buckskin breeches and an old worn- 
out, home-spun, snull-colored waistcoat, and home- 
made shoes, with a fine shad on a deer-skin string. 
He had thrown away half a dozen salmon before he 
caught his shad, as he never would have heard the 
last of it amono; " the folks," if he had broug;ht home 
a " mess of salmon." The}- were too plenty in the 
river. The sight of this shad settles the question of 
dinner, and neither the hams that have lasted over 
from last winter and are still hano-ino; on the rafters, 
or the chicken-house, back of the pig-pen, which is 
nearly in front of the house and surely over the road 



100 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

line, or the pot of beans that hangs on the crane in 
the fire-place, are to be touched. She pushes up the 
bench under the loom, where she has been making 
checkered flannel, and, taking a peep into the oven 
to see that the brown bread and pies, (New England 
is death on delicious pies, and it is a shameful innova- 
tion from old England that the well-cidered and rai- 
sined mince pie after a Thanksgiving dinner of the 
olden time should be put aside for the plum-pudding) 
are to be ready for dinner, and seeing that the fire- 
broom and slice are in the '' corner," takes down the 
turn-spit for the fish. If, as she tends the cooking, 
she speaks of her neighbor's husband's shirt-ruffle as 
looking; at 'lection as thoug-h it was ironed with a 
slice, be sure she is of the commonest of New Eng- 
land stock, who does not fancy any pretentions in 
dress or speech ; but if she says it looked as though 
ironed with a ^^^eZ, then conclude that her shoes o' 
Sundays have rather high heels, nearly in the middle 
of the foot, and that she sees to it that her husband's 
knee-buckles are not steel, but of paste diamonds. 
"Peel" is the English term for fire-shovel, and "slice" 
the every day New England term. To use the former 
was considered an affectation. The fire-broom with 
which she had cleaned the oven in the morning, j^re- 
paratory to baking, is made by binding coarse husks 
to a handle and the husks " stick out " in an ill-man- 
nerly way. If the children who return from school 
have their hair in the least displaced, they are re- 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 101 

minded that their heads " look like fire-brooms ; " 
for propriety and order is the rule of this humble 
abode. We notice as she stands before the fire-place 
tending the shad, that her shoes which are in sight, 
as her straight gown and petticoat are short, are made 
of calf-skin and were evidently cobbled by the head 
of the house from leather obtained at the last butch- 
ering and tanned at home. She has a kerchief over 
her shoulders which crosses on her breast with the 
ends fastened into a belt, and she has a white cap on 
her head. After dinner she often brings out a cap 
with a frill of great size, so that her husband, when 
he popped the question, had to walk round directly in 
front in order to be certain he was '' shining up " to 
the right person. Passing the skillet and warming- 
pan which hang near the fire, she takes from the 
dresser the array of pewter plates and the platter, and 
there is a commotion on the rack of spoons. The 
children being about, it is necessary for her some- 
times to stoop under the articles of clothing that hang 
on poles over head. There is a common mug for 
drinking purposes and perhaps she visits the tankard 
for beer before the meal begins. She puts on another 
cap and apron from her very abundant stock ; for, 
like her neighbors, her number of caps and the 
neatness and richness of the white curtains on her 
bed, are the pride of her little home. 

The pity of it, she doesn't ask us to sit down to 
dinner, though she surely would if she had nothing 



102 SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

but hasty pudding to offer ; therefore, we decline to 
help her scour her pewter plates after dinner, till the}'' 
shine like silver moons, but can't choose but admire 
the rapidity with which she knits. If her husband 
does a little coopering or carpentering when planting 
and harvesting time is over, perhaps she may have 
an ivory knitting-sheath in which the needle is placed. 
Otherwise she takes two pieces of woolen cloth and 
sews a narrow slip, large enough to admit a goose 
quill, and this is pinned to her side, and the needle 
run in this to keep it in place while knitting. 

If the good housewife is a woman of years and 
grown-up family, we might be drawn to a figure near 
by, whom John Alden has recently described and 

called 

Priscilla. 
Priscilla, youn g and sweet and fair, 
Sits in a queer old high-backed chair, 
And makes with such a pretty air 

Pretense of spinning; 
And with her bright and laughing eyes 
She looks across the wheel she plies ; 
Round her half-parted lips there lies 

A smile so winning. 

And with, what seems an antique grace, 
How sweetly doth her lovely face 
Rise o'er her ruff's encircling lace, 

And set us dreaming 
Of roses peering from the snow. 
As bright her blushing cheeks do glow 
As any rose that ere did blow, 

With rare sweets teeming. 



10^ 
SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

And like twin stars her glancing eyes 
Reflect, from out their orbed sides, 
The light a painter well might prize 

Beyond his medal. 
Graceful she stretches forth her hand, 
As if to start the distaff's band ; 
Beneath, her light foot steals out and 

Moves the swift treadle. 

A little cap of sable hue 

Her brown hair hides, yet lets us view, 

Beneath its upturned edge of blue, 

Soft fringes, showing ; 
A rose blooms at her snowy throat. 
And o'er her silken petticoat 
An apron white doth downward float, 

To her feet going. 

Her namesake sweet she doth recall ; 
X Her downy kerchief's rise and fall 

Doth strangely move us one and all. 

Till we're beginning 
Within cur hearts, somehow, to feel— 
We're at a shrine where we must kneel 
To that fair saint behind the wheel, 
Priscilla, spinning. 

To continue our ifs, this family may liave lived on 
the street in 1759. In which case it might be uiter- 
estin.. for us to step out doors, for in that yea.- m- 
spectors from Northampton examined the street and 
found over thirty of Springfield's best f\im.hes had 
encroached on the road. In some cases the fence 
had been advanced ; in some cases it was the pig-pen 



104 SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

or shop. Among those fined were Rev. Mr. Breck, 
Colonel Worthington and Edward Pynchon. 

Requests for public prayer were common, the fol- 
lowing, read by Rev. Mr. Hooker, at Northampton, 
about 17G0, being good examples: 

" Benajah Strong Junr being Dangrousley Sick with 
the plurisey Desiers the prayers of the congregashan 
for him his pairence Desiers the Same." 

" Noah Bridgman jun. and his wif Desire that 
thanks might Be o-iven to God in this Congreo-ation 
for his goodness to em in Preserving the Life of there 
Child when emenently exposed By a Suden fall from 
a horse ; they allso Desire Prayer it may be healed of 
its Brusese." 

" Oliver Burt and his wife Desires thanks may be 
given to god in the Congregation for his goodness to 
them in preserving there oldes Child when in Emen- 
ent Danger of Being Drouned." 

Fashions, like morals, continued to change, until 
the Revolution. The courtly styles of that period 
have become familiar to us during this memorial year. 
A lady's coiffure was elaborate and striking, the pre- 
vailing mode being the pompadour. Local garrets 
give accounts of satin slips, (underskirts), very, very 
narrow, with bright-colored overskirts cut close to the 
form. The neck was diamond-shape, and the waist 
extended but just below the bust. The overskirt had 
a few gathers at the back. There are also remains 
of satin shoes with pointed toes and altitudinous heels, 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 105 

rich trains of great lengths and sleeves of great brev- 
ity. The pumpkin-head hoods resurrected for cen- 
tennial parties, were worn one hundred years ago. 
In this century, the scanty petticoats, and low neck 
and classic gown are remembered by the aged among 
us ; as, also, the later leghorns and calashes and van- 
dykes. Calashes were made of rattan and silk. By 
pulling a cord called the bridle, it could be brought 
clear over the face, in case of storm or modesty. They 
used to say, " Come, put on your calash and Vandyke, 
and take your black knitting work." It was the say- 
ing that when a woman brought her black knitting- 
work, she " had come to stay a fortnight." 

There was in the early times much formality at 
funerals. Persons of distinction were carried on the 
shoulders of strong pall-bearers ; and, when the dis- 
tance from the house to the grave was great, it is 
related that relays of pall-bearers were provided, and 
something having a strong resemblance, both in flavor 
and odor, to the best cherry rum, also furnished. The 
stories growing out of this funeral custom are plenty 
enough, not only here, but among all the up-river 
families, and there is no doubt that the bluer blooded 
personages were well wept, well honored, and well 
feasted, at their demise. One of the more foolish 
superstitions among the lesser families, which is even 
now seen in the dark corners of our little creation 
w^as, that after death the cats in the neighborhood 
were given a super-feline taste for human flesh, and 

14 



106 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

there has probably been as much care taken among 
this class of people, to see that these " possessed " 
animals were not gratified, as to look after the relig- 
ious arrangement. 

One good custom people used to have, and that 
was to keep a lookout when their neighbors were in 
distress. Some forty years ago, a little brother of the 
present Dr. Bliss, of Beirut College, was lost in the 
dingle (cemetery). He had gone there to get chest- 
nuts. At night the First church bell was rung, and 
almost every man in the village turned out with a 
lantern, and filled the dingle with lamps, but to no 
purpose. Parties were organized to go in different 
directions. One of them, including Major Ingersoll, 
took the Chicopee road, along which were seen little 
foot-prints. These led to the bank of the Chicopee 
river, and there stopped with its fearful suggestions. 
They pursued, however, up the river for some dis- 
tance, to where they found some boards, and under 
them the sleeping wanderer. He had pulled them 
over him, and fallen asleep from exhaustion. It had 
been arranged that if the child was found, notice of 
it should be given by firing a cannon ; so the Major 
hastened back with the good news, and at 4 o'clock, 
on that weary Sunday morning, the. discouraged 
searchers learned of the discovery by the firing of 
cannon, on the Armory Hill, and there was great re- 
joicing. About that time cooperative action was 
applied to the evil of counterfeiting. Colonel Russell 



SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 107 

and others kept close watch, and were soon satisfied 
that their man had his headquarters at Springfield. 
One evening when a pretty strong guard were out 
on horseback, the Colonel noticed a suspicious look- 
ing fellow passing them on horseback, and, continu- 
ing up Main street, they soon saw another horseman 
coming down. It appears he had stopped somewhere 
about Ferry street, and changed his clothes as a 
disguise. The Colonel and others turned about. 
The fellow, seeing he was followed, put whip to his 
horse. A hot race ensued, and the party reached 
Palmer before the counterfeiter was taken. He was 
tried before John Ingersoll, justice of the peace. In 
his saddle-bag were found counterfeit bills and stock- 
ings full of specie, which he had probably exchanged 
for his worthless paper. 

It was cooperation also, they used in dealing with 
Satan. People turned out pretty liberally at the 
services. Saturday nights Dr. Osgood used to hold a 
Bible class in the old Parish house, and he often had 
three hundred scholars. It was as much a Sunday 
service as the morning preaching, but Sunday night 
all was over, and the fellows would begin the week, as 
it were, by going to see their girls. Springfield streets 
are described by aged people as being almost de- 
serted evenings, — an occasional going to and from 
houses, but no habitual walking. Business hours 
were not crowded into the night ; more was made 
of home and home amusements. The little boys 



108 SPKINGFIELD MEMOKIES. 

often thought family services were a httle too long 
at home, and would like more freedom. There was 
George Colton, an honest and devoted church-goer. 
He always had one prayer at the meeting and at 
home. Most people had learned it, — he pronounced it 
slowly enough and often enough. His last sentence 
was : " And to thee we give never ending praises. 
Amen." One Fourth of July morning, his little pat- 
riotic son was at his wits' end during devotions. With- 
out, crackers were popping, boys a-shouting and can- 
non firing. As the paternal prayer drew its long 
length to the close, the excited boy, not being able to 
wait, sang out, " and to thee we give never ending 
praises. Amen. Heard it a thousand times ;" and 
ran out of the door before he could be caught. 

An eao-le once lit on the rooster of the First church 
steeple, affording fun for the local sports. Dr. Dan- 
iel C. Brewer brought out his rifle and fired under it. 
The impudent bird did not stir. The second shot 
*'put daylight" through the rooster, and the eagle 
flew. He soared over the town, way off about Aga- 
wam, and at length sailed back to his perch on the 
rooster. Again the Doctor tried his hand and brought 
him. But his claws were set, so he hung still to the 
rooster. At length he fell and was duly stuffed and 
admired, for it was a large bird. 

On the whole we must conclude that the people of 
75 and 100 years ago, in spite of their traditional 
religious guards, had many very glaring immoralities. 



SPKINGFIELD MEMORIES. 109 

Profanity was very common; disgustingly so. It 
called out action in the Continental Congress against 
it, and Washington said no gentleman would be 
guilty of it, though if this is the case, he was confess- 
edly ungentlemanly on occasion. Even legislation 
was not pure, in state or country. Congress sanc- 
tioned lotteries for objects of public weal and charity, 
and men remember the excitement at the drawins: of 
the lottery for the Springfield bridge over the river, 
about 1820. The drawing occurred at Jeremy War- 
riner's tavern, and two little girls dressed all in white, 
turned the lottery wheel, — a sort of gamblers' angels, 
you would say. Few people know just how they are 
going to look to posterit}^ We should be greatly 
scandalized if a Springfield minister should have an 
ordination ball, as was formerly common. At Mr. 
Osgood's ordination ball, four good church members, 
who have since attained honorary titles and distin- 
guished children, retired to a room over Blake's shop, 
and played cards. Perhaps the secret history of the 
past had better not be pursued further. 

Now that the Fourth of July, 1876, is past, the day 
on which Ira Fancher, of Sandy Hill, N. Y., prophe- 
sied (his sixteenth prophecy,) that the world was to 
come to an end, based on the text : " For the child 
shall die an hundred years old," and our own sins, 
magnified by the possibility of so terrible an event, 
having taken on their true proportion, I think we 
cannot escape the conclusion that in morals, in relig- 



110 SPRINGFIELD MEMORIES. 

ion, and even in patriotic service, we are better than 
our Revolutionary fathers. A hundred years of dream- 
ing has covered up the bhick and magnified the 
white on their robes. Open immorality is not as 
common ; drunkenness lives more in the dark ; men 
died as quickly and valorously on the battle-fields of 
the Civil war as the Revolutionary ; and public men, 
we may say even in sight of the smoke of a bitter 
political campaign, look more to their conscience. 
Literature and art have grown in the right direction, 
invention has drawn the world's recognition, and in 
every thing, save an ill-bred disregard for superiors 
and a certain boorishness of manners, especially 
among children, the good old time is not so good as 
the good present time. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




